The Foregone Conclusion
by The Mustachioed Cat
Summary: Here's a shadow of the future. Not the terror and end of Third Impact, just a rolling landscape of sameness.
1. Chapter 1

**The Foregone Conclusion**

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* * *

**

One

* * *

Misato Katsuragi carefully put her coffee cup down. Stared at it.

"Why?" she finally said.

Not three days had passed since the destruction of the 64th Angel. Major Katsuragi and Doctor Akagi were in the latter's office. The doctor has just informed the Major that her ward, Asuka Langley Sohryu, will be suspended from piloting duty indefinitely.

"She's approaching the limit of usefulness," Ritsuko explained. "Look..."

She brought up an image on her computer. Black screen, two white lines side by side, indented and embossed. It was easy to see that both lines fit together, a cavity in one corresponding to a protrusion in the other.

"This is a graphical representation of the core-pilot relationship for the Unit One and the Third Child," Ritsuko explained. "Every deviation from a single straight line - perfect and instantaneous synchronization - represents stress on the pilot or the Eva. Shinji's graph represents a statistically insignificant amount of stress. I've had to magnify it in order to illustrate how the system represents errors. Now, this is Asuka's graph..."

The Second Child's graph was different. Jagged. The side representing the core's connections was malformed, composed of not only of steep peaks, but areas where the line folded back on itself, intersecting what had come just before and forming chaotic squiggles and crude geometric shapes. But all that strangeness was nothing compare to the amount of deviation on Asuka's side of things, and for a moment Misato had to look away.

"That is Asuka?" she asked, gesturing blindly to one side of the screen, staring at a random bit of equipment installed in the corner of Ritsuko's office.

"Yes, this is from the last harmonics test."

"I..." Misato closed her eyes. "Harmonics test." That was a matter conducted without any direct interaction between pilot and core. Project E used the tests to fine-tune the technology in the entry plug to each individual pilot.

Asuka had not been exposed to the core when the measurements on Ritsuko's screen had been taken – when her white line had been 'drawn'. But the core's influence was visible anyway. Misato stared at the screen now, teeth unconsciously bared, hands curled into shaking fists.

Asuka's line was _warped. _Like the core, it was almost all dips and peaks, though Asuka's line sloped into curves instead of jagged points. Where the core descended into chaotic squiggles, the girl's line bowed outward in a plateau that ran the length of the chaos. It did not fold back on itself as the core did, but that line was Asuka. And it was supposed to be straight.

"It took Asuka five years of training to achieve such a high rate of synchronization," Ritsuko said, not quite facing Misato, probably quite aware that the other woman was probably looking for something to hit her with. "The core information was damaged, you see. Barely viable. If the German Branch had not insisted on a national pilot, Asuka never would have been allowed to become one."

"Why does," Misato tried to get it out, ended with a short, mirthless laugh. Because she really did not need Ritsuko to tell her why Asuka's mind was not a simple straight line. This new information slotted neatly into everything Misato knew or suspected about the Second Child. The girl was warped. And now Misato knew why.

"If she continues to pilot," Doctor Akagi continued in a voice that, to Misato, seemed damnably detached, "she will become psychologically distinct from humanity. Prolonged separation from the core may allow her mind to recover."

May. May may may recover. Misato Katsuragi needed a 'will' and she needed it _now_.

"I wanted to consult with you before I submitted my report, as a courtesy..."

"Why did you wait this long?" Misato interrupted, her voice above a whisper, but only just.

Ritsuko said nothing. Misato spun to face her. The blond doctor avoided eye contact.

"This line," the Major gestured to the monitor, "is _my ward_. She is my responsibility and..."

Katsuragi sagged in the chair.

"How long have you know about this?" she asked. Because if this was something new, if this was something Ritsuko had uncovered recently, that was different. But.

"The psychiatrist assigned to her in Germany suggested that exposure to Eva was..."

"Years!" the Major hissed, then "How many years, then?"

"Once I established that there was a tangible problem, we began screening her periodically," Ritsuko said, jaw tight. This was not exactly a direct answer, so she probably meant 'since Asuka had arrived in Japan' – nearly two years ago!

"Tests were performed, first during every medical checkup, and more recently, once a week."

Silence stretched out.

"She... failed the test yesterday," Akagi said this quietly, in a tone that suggested they were talking about something fatal, something that had grown in a dark, unknown place and metastasized and was even now spreading through Asuka Langley Sohryu.

"What does that mean." The tension was passing through Misato in waves. Muscles flexing, relaxing.

"The test was originally designed to measure cognitive development in infants..." Ritsuko stopped. Misato realized her nostrils were flaring and that she had, while the doctor talked, been slowing leaning forward and coiling herself up. Preparing to strike. To punish.

"Misato..." Ritsuko began.

The Major did not move. Her eyes were glassy, and staring not at Ritsuko, but through her.

"What does it mean, that she failed the test?" the voice was Misato's own, but coming from far away. Because, again, she could already feel out the answer. And she was thinking back, over the last week, the last month, the last year. Trying to remember Asuka. Trying to see what Ritsuko was about to suggest.

"Repeated synchronization with Unit Two's core has caused the Second Child's cognitional development to regress," Ritsuko said. "And it has recently reached the point where... she isn't... she isn't really self-aware anymore."

Misato breathed in. Waited for Ritsuko to make it all right. Waited. Waited. Breathed out.

"You are dead," the Major said tonelessly, slouching to her feet, turning on the spot. "Asuka will never forgive me for this, and I'll never forgive you for keeping her condition from me."

"Come on _Major_!" Akagi made a halfway convincing play at exasperation. "Without Unit Two, we would not have survived the first year. We needed her to..."

"From this moment," the Major interrupted, pausing at the office door, her voice breaking, "I a-am against you in every way. We are not f-friends. We are not colleagues. If your division wants to talk with mine, go ahead, we both have people for that."

And then the Major was gone.

* * *

Asuka sneezed. Shinji glanced up from his cooking and walked over with a box of tissues. The girl only glared at him. Wordlessly, the Third Child returned to his task.

The Second Child was trying to do homework. Should have been a simple thing, but she was having problems. Asuka Langley Sohryu, college graduate, had been staring at a high-school physics proof for five minutes now. Variables and constants shifted in her mind, eluding reason.

And she was aware of Shinji. Aware that he was hearing her not do this stupid, simple homework. And she was aware, yes, that he had finished this same problem already, before leaving school.

He was just a s_imul__**a**_**tio**n though, she assured herself. Shinji Ikari was just a program with a convincing hum**an f**_**a**__ca_de. He was an emulation application resting on a boy-shaped bubble of space and time and **heat.**

She looked down at her textbook, a German nursery rhyme playing in her head, ov**er** and _ov_er.

* * *

Shinji Ikari cooked, tossing the rice to force a slight, crunchy burn, while making sure the curry did notcurdle.

Of late, he had been experimenting with some expensive ingredients. Misato had finally gotten around to giving him direct access to his bank account, and there was nothing else he cared to spend money on. He liked it, actually. The idea that he was buying stuff with his own money and then turning it into something to give to his roommates.

Tonight Shinji was cooking something new. Asparagus, grown down in southern Japan bog-country. He was worried about getting it right. The twelve stalks had been soaking in water all day, but still seemed stiff after ten minutes of simmer. He was setting the stove at a higher setting, knowing it was foolhardy to force a boil, when a pair of hands snaked around his waist.

* * *

He is not real, Asuka thought as she pulled Shinji down the hall.

He is just a thing, like every_thing _else. _Does_ **not ne**_**ed **__any_thi**ng**. Just **exi**_**s**__t, just _be th**er**_e. An_d be hard.

* * *

Asuka rode the him for fifteen minutes before climaxing. Shinji was safely encased in a condom, and did little but lie there and take it. He had only managed to come with Asuka once, during their first time, back when he thought they were doing something important. Something like sex, or love, or whatever.

But in the aftermath of that first night, when Asuka had yanked herself free and dried herself off on his covers, then staggered off the bed and out of the room, Shinji had come to understand... well, nothing, honestly. Their relationship was not a relationship. Their secret was not a secret. Asuka did not talk during the act, and had never made spoken reference to it. The whole thing was a great, neutral intensity that settled onto Shinji's mind when he had nothing else to occupy it. Her mechanical motions atop him were a lewd riddle with no answer. The wetness on his lap when she was done was simply fact.

In weak moments an image of that first night, of him smearing a kiss across Asuka's tight and unresponsive lips, flashed through Shinji's mind reminding him that, all evidence to the contrary, he was still somehow a child.

And now, in the present, she was finishing up. Arching her back, a ring of muscle inside her tightening around Shinji, moaning and digging her fingers into his shoulders aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand done. The girl seemed to collapse into herself, head hanging down, hair spilling down his chest, hiding her face from view.

And now she would get off him, with that sound of shucked fruit, gather up her clothing, and trot off. Then she would take a bath, change, and probably watch television until she fell asleep on the couch. While she was doing all that, Shinji would be smearing anti-biotic salve on any new scratches – because physical privacy of any kind was absolutely out of the question when you piloted Eva – and putting the bedsheets into wash, because he could not get any kind of sleep with her smell still on them. While the wash was running – and assuming Asuka had cleared out of the washroom – he would take a shower and have a quick soak. After that, he'd switch the bedsheets to the dryer and have a light snack or dinner, depending on the time of night. He would also drink several cans of Misato's beer, as many as it took to calm him down. Then, when the dryer had cycled, he would put the sheets back on his bed and lay on it and stare at the ceiling and feel nothing at all through the alcoholic haze. If he had gone through two or more cans of beer, he'd probably just heap the covers on the floor and lay in them and try not to vomit.

That was how it went. That was how it had gone the last seventeen – or was it eighteen? – times they had done it. Just sit still and take it. That was all she wanted from him.

But Asuka was not pulling herself off him this time. The naked girl was not moving at all. And... something. A slight sensation on his chest, below the hair. A single point of pressure that moved down and to the side, following the contour of his body. Slowly, he pulled his hands from under her thighs and parted Asuka's hair. She was crying. Smiling and crying. And her eyes were showing a lot of white, because she was bent forward but looking straight ahead. Even when the hair had been blocking out everything else her eyes had still stared level forward. At him. Her lips were moving but only a terrible whisper was coming out, just loud enough for Shinji to be sure that she wasn't actually saying anything at all.

* * *

Misato arrived home thirty minutes later, just as Shinji had finished repairing the inevitable consequences of leaving cooking unattended for any length of time. Asuka had finally gotten off him and pulled on her panties, leaving the rest of her clothes for Shinji to deposit in the washroom hamper. The encounter had left him empty and, for the first time, disgusted. Her expression at the end. Like one of those horror movie ghosts that killed people by crawling out of televisions. She was a slim, beautiful girl with bright blue eyes and red-orange hair... and she was also _monstrous_.

He tried to push it back, leave it for later, for his bedroom ceiling. But he. He was going to have to talk with Asuka. About the fucking. About... everything he had been too scared to ask before. That wordless intensity was weighing down on him harder than ever, the memory of the act too much to bear. Those eyes staring at him, eyes that were bloodshot and dark, the pupils so big there was only a thin ring of blue visible... He pushed the image down. Concentrated on finishing his cooking, preparing the meal. Now was not the time. Soon, but not now.

Dinner was not unpleasant, despite everything weighing on Shinji's mind. The asparagus had turned out fine – apparently a wild boil was exactly what was required to soften it up. The curry – a mushroom teriyaki in mild brine – was good as well. None of this was surprising, since Shinji was an excellent cook, but Misato still complimented him in the course of their dinner small talk. Asuka said that the rice was not dry enough, but had no other complaint, which was a compliment in itself coming from her.

Misato asked them about how the day had gone, and while both Children had answers, she seemed to pay more attention to Asuka. Maybe Shinji was just imagining it because he was rather fixated on the problem of Asuka himself... But then the meal ended and the small talk ceased and the Major announced that Asuka would not be piloting anymore.

And the red head was on her feet at once, her knee hitting the table and knocking over one of the tall glasses they used. Shinji caught it and righted it, without thinking.

"What are you talking about?" the girl _shrieked_.

Misato stood too, took a step toward the girl, then seemed to think better of it. "We think it is damaging you," she said.

"Bullshit!" Asuka's head whipped back and forth, a cyclone of hair. "This is what I do! This is..." and then she looked at Shinji. Looked at him like a horror movie ghost. Looked to Misato. "Punishment? A punishment!"

Shinji had scooted away from the table. Now he left the chair and retreated into the kitchen. He had no words. Could think of nothing intelligent to say. Could not react beyond simple preservation.

"This is was right!" Asuka continued to shriek, clutching one side of her face. "Is a what you wanted! Is a given!"

Shinji shrank away. Was she really not making sense, or had the intensity that had been sitting on his brain finally cracked it open? His vision tunneled in on her and that single bloodshot, dilated eye.

He... he wanted Unit One. Needed to be inside it.

This was. Asuka. She was like an Angel.

Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.

* * *

Misato watched the girl scream herself out, preparing to get between her and Shinji if need be. The language breakdown was disturbing. Was this Asuka having trouble with Japanese because she was angry, or was she having trouble with language in general? She was saying something about giving to Shinji, something Misato could not follow, but the Third Child apparently understood enough of it. When the girl took a menacing step forward, he bolted up and into the entrance corridor, smacking at the light switch and cowering in the dim.

"Ten years life mother" the girl screamed, and Misato felt a ball of ice in her stomach. Had Asuka just called her... "mother down dead and for it. For Unit Two. My. Mine!" The knot in Misato's gut released. Asuka had just been talking about her mother. Her real mother.

The girl trailed off, wincing. Pressed both hands to her face. Silence.

"I waste ten years of my life!" she started up again in a full-on shriek. "I get my arms and legs chopped off. My insiders. My insides smashed. And you thing mine. Think. My Unit Two. Is damaging me!"

"Can you hear yourself, Asuka?" Misato quickly put in. "You're okay, all right? We just have to keep you out of Unit Two for a little while and..."

"Akagi bitch that test," Asuka slurred. "Failed admissions standardized test. Berkley or Harvard..." She trailed off in German, swaying on her feet as she spat out a seemingly random sequence of words in her native tongue. She grabbed her chair back. Was clearly having trouble staying upright.

"Gone. Depart. Deported," Asuka reverted to Japanese, managed a drunken glare at Misato. "Go ahead and deport me, bitch."

And then the Second Child collapsed.

Misato checked Asuka's pulse and, after a moment's thought, got the first-aid kit from under the sink and pricked the girl's finger with a oneshot blood glucose monitor. Too much to ask, really, for Asuka to experience a hitherto unsuspected diabetic episode the day after she had failed Akagi's little test but.

But Misato wanted so much for this to be something she could understand. Something people had written books about. Held charity benefits for. The mania, the rambling, the slurring, it could have been a diabetic episode, right? Nothing to do with the structures of reason falling apart in this poor girl's head...

The blood glucose monitor beeped, informing Misato that her ward had not suddenly developed diabetes.

Cold and quiet and more furious than she had been at any point in her life, Misato Katsuragi picked up the limp, breathing body that maybe wasn't Asuka Langley Sohryu anymore, carried it to Asuka's room and put it to bed.

Back in the kitchen the Major cracked open a beer and quickly drained it. Followed that can with another, then went to where Shinji was in the darkened entrance corridor. The boy looked up at her, manic and terrified. Misato sat down next to him and crack open a third can of beer and took a swig, then passed it to Shinji. The boy emptied it in four long gulps. Misato could tell this was not his first time doing it.

Silence. Shinji stared ahead. Sweating. Arms around his legs. Misato touched his shoulder and when he did not flinch away, pulled him into a hug.

"I need," he said. Stopped. Pulled away. "There's something I need to tell you."


	2. Chapter 2

**The Foregone Conclusion**

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**Two

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Shinji yawned and took in the devastation. The living room had been thoroughly trashed, popcorn and playing cards thrown around the couch, empty beer cans and torn wrapping paper scattered across the floor. He crossed into the kitchen, retrieved a trash bag from beneath the sink, and got to work. Asuka was on thin ice with the Major, far too thin for the older woman to come home to such a mess and not go ballistic.

He worked quickly, unclear on exactly when Katsuragi would return home. Tactical Division shifts were in constant four hour increment rotations, which made tracking the Major's schedule tricky. Could be she would arrive home in twenty minutes, could be sometime after noon.

So Shinji sifted through buried gifts and uneaten snacks, arranging them on the couch and kotatsu. The rest of the clutter he dumped into the garbage bag. It took less than five minutes. So little effort, and the girls could not be bothered? Did Asuka _want _to get in trouble with the Katsuragi?

He did a few blind grabs under the furniture to make sure he had everything, then knotted the trash bag and ran it downstairs for disposal.

As Shinji climbed the stairs, he slowly evaluated the coming day. Make breakfast? Of course. Two more girls to deal with if he was late on that count, Hikari and her older sister Kodama. They had arrived last night, after Shinji had gone to sleep. He had never met the elder Horaki, but imagined her as a fiercer version of her sister. So yeah. Best to prepare some food for Asuka and her friends. Especially if he was going to be living with them for the next week.

Out the stairwell and into the open corridor that ringed the building's interior. Here the floor was littered with bits of trash, dust, and mysterious tumbling clumps of black hair. Shinji had not seen the cleaning service in months, and supposed the superintendent could just not be bothered anymore. The Katsuragi residence was the only apartment that was still occupied on a regular basis. People just were not moving to Tokyo 3 anymore.

He paused at the apartment door, triggered the manual release, and pulled it half open. Listened. If the girls were up, he would just turn around and go to school. He was willing to buy a cheap uniform at the school store if need be because, well. Sohryu had a tendency to get mean when she entertained company.

_Have you met the messiantic Third Child? _

_Hey Shinji, show them where the Angel penetrated you._

_Did you know he likes to play with dolls?_

_He's just angry I got promoted ahead of him._

Yeah, Shinji had been humilated a few times but. Well. The real problem was, the people she attacked him in front of never came back. Four sets of 'friends' had come by for dinner since Sohryu had become Katsuragi's assistant. People from Tactical Division, a guy from Technical Division, Maya Ibuki. All of them came expecting a dinner party, and all of them left embarassed or angry. And yeah, they never came back.

And that was wrong. And it was his fault. It was against the point of keeping Asuka close in the first place.

That night some six months ago, when Sohryu had shattered apart in the Katsuragi kitchen, Major Katsuragi had come very close to doing something _unfortunate_ to the unconscious Second Child. Because of the sex. Because the Major had insisted that what Asuka had done to him was rape. Even though Asuka was the one that was sick.

It had been a long night. The two remaining roommates had circled each other, moving around the apartment, arguing. The Major wanted Asuka gone, said that she could get all the best help back in Germany, or America, or whoever would take her. Shinji had agreed that maybe that was right, but that Asuka should still get a say in the matter, whenever she was again fit to say anything to anyone. He was not going to let the Major simply _send her away. _The argument bounced back and forth. Furniture was overturned. The door to Asuka's room was slammed open and then shut. And at the end of the night, after they were furious with one another and drunk – because of course both sides had deemed it wise to drink can upon can of beer during their heated exchange of opinion – Misato had gone into her room and never come out.

_The Major_ came out of Misato's room the next day. The person Shinji was usually comfortable with and loved, she was gone. She simply did not live with him any more. The Major, _that_ was the person Shinji had been living with the last six months. The Major. Katsuragi. Not Misato - she was still in that room, as far as Shinji could figure. But he and the Major had managed to come to an agreement the morning after everything in the Katsuragi household went just completely to Hell: the former Second Child could stay if she wanted to, and the Major would help Asuka help herself, if the girl had the will for it.

And no more sex, of course.

Shinji was not going to risk letting Asuka alienate herself from Hikari and Kodama. That was why he had gone to sleep early the previous night. Without Katsuragi there to act as a go-between, Asuka might well have driven the Horaki family away just as quickly and thoroughly as she had everyone else. Just because he was there.

Doctor Akagi had said Asuka could get better, and Shinji just had to have faith that she would. And that keeping her close had been the correct decision.

No sound inside the apartment aside from the hum of the air conditioner, so Shinji went in. Nothing. The girls were still asleep.

He continued about his morning routine, taking a quick shower, changing out the laundry, and finally starting on breakfast. Or trying to, anyway. He got as far as the kitchen table, stepped on the spot where Asuka had collapsed six months ago, and went rigid. Had to sit down and catch himself, metaphorically.

It was fine. He was in control. He was helping her get better. He was killing the Enemy. Everything was okay. He could endure it all, Asuka's curses, the sideways looks he got at school for being _that_ guy. In control. For the first time in his life everything was spread out. Everything was in its place. His friends had gone to New Yokohama, but that was fine. Katsuragi treated him like a sub-ordinate, but that was fine. He could not meet Ayanami's gaze, because it made him remember someone else but. Fine. It was fine.

There was a synch test at noon today. He needed it, badly. Eva calmed him. And how fucked up was that? He could remember hating Unit One, hating the way it smelled, hating everything to do with piloting it. Now it was more familiar than his own life. It... leveled him out.

So just stand up, he told himself. So just start up the stove. So just.

A slight sound. Feet on carpet. Shinji turned. A young woman was at the mouth of the hallway that separated his room from Asuka's. She was taller than Hikari, her brown hair pulled back in a single ponytail. Kodama, Shinji concluded absently.

She was staring at him, and Shinji realized his eyes... Something of what had happened in his mind must have been visible in his face or bearing, because the girl turned around. Stopped. Turned back.

"Is it too early?" she asked. "Would you like to be... ah...?"

"Make yourself at home," Shinji responded solicitously, gesturing limply to the kitchen and living room. "I should be getting breakfast started, anyway."

He stood went over to the kitchen sideboard. Discovered the box of oatmeal he had planned to use was gone. He looked over the counter and under it, even poked around the pans, but it was gone. Surely the girls hadn't...

"Woah, she wasn't kidding!" Kodama was saying. "You clean up fast, Shin."

He paused. That was different. _Shin. _

"I don't think we've met, have we?" the young woman continued, walking into the kitchen. "Kodama Horaki." She extended her hand.

"You ate the oatmeal," he replied, gingerly shaking her hand.

Up close, Kodama had little resemblance to her sister. Her hair was closer to chestnut than black, but still, it seemed, a shade darker than her sister's. Her face was clear of freckles and more vertical than horizontal. Shinji was also pretty certain Hikari would not be wandering around a home in which she was a guest wearing only a thin nightshirt and. Well, hopefully she was wearing underwear. The hem of her shirt was just low enough to turn the whole thing into a guessing game.

He dropped the hand and turned his attention back to the sideboard. That was about enough of that, Ikari.

"Oatmeal?" his new acquaintence muttered to herself as Shinji rooted out some packets of dried dashi and nori.

"Oh! Uh... we kinda did something that outside," a chair moved, shuddered as she settled into it. He could feel her looking at him. "Just a girl-party game," she continued. "Asuka said it would be okay."

He turned on the rice cooker. Set water to boil for soup. Considered the dashi. Glanced back at Kodama, trying to avoid looking like he was trying not to look at her. "How bitter, do you think?" he asked, holding up one of the dashi packets.

"White," she replied, and stretched, as though she knew exactly what was going through Shinji's mind and intentionally making it worse. "I like it black, but Hikari can't stand that stuff."

"Neither can Asuka," Shinji replied.

As if summoned, the redhead appeared at the lip of the hallway. If he had not been looking at Kodama, Shinji would have missed it. She glanced around, presumably to make sure the place was no longer trashed, noted Kodama talking to Shinji, then retreated to her room.

Okay. That wasn't a bad first encounter. She had been able to resist mocking him in front of Kodama. The Major said she had spoken with Asuka about her behavior, maybe some of it had gotten through. Or maybe the former Second Child was just too tired to be bothered.

Relieved, he continued making breakfast. Kodama made small talk about the weather and what the girls planned to do with the day. Shinji made polite noises as he went about the kitchen. Apparently they were headed for the beach. Then to the Kakkei Mall. They had this cake bar that was...

Their 'conversation', such as it was, was interrupted when Hikari emerged from Sohryu's bedroom, red faced and fully dressed, angrily whispering at her sister to Put Some Clothes On! What would their guardian think of us!

"Nice meeting you, Shinji," Kodama chortled as her younger sister dragged her from the room.

Well, that was more what he had been expecting. At least she had gone through Hikari. He had figured their long friendship would alter Asuka's actions somewhat. Hikari would probably be able to tolerate more of her than the others, too.

The rice cooker chimed. Shinji slung four servings of rice out, using a slightly smaller bowl to perfectly dome each portion. He set the table for four, with a tray of pickles and soy sauce in the middle. The miso wasn't quite done yet, so he went to his room, carefully not looking at the open door opposite his own, and gathered up his school bag and overnight duffle. Could turn out tonight would be better spent in the NERV barracks. Or maybe he could bargain for Ayanami's couch.

Back to the kitchen. Ladle out the soup. Cover the Major's portion with a chaffing dish so she could warm it up later. Mixed laughter drifted through the apartment. And that was good. The perfect time to leave. 


	3. Chapter 3

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**

Three

* * *

Shinji breathed in the LCL and concentrated on nothing. Not the chatter of the open comm, nor the weight that settled on him as he immersed himself further into Eva. He was well past the nominal synch ratio limit of 100, which was based on the percentage of synchronization between Unit One and his A10 nerve connections. Lieutenant Ibuki would have referred to his current state, in excess of the nominal limit, as an expression of 'depth,' the degree to which the pilot relied on the entry plug to control Eva's finer functions. At his current 'depth', Shinji's skin was starting to itch, his breath and heartbeat slowing to match that of Unit One.

The entry plug was quiet. Nearly every pilot-assistance system had been switched off automatically, as it became redundant.

Then to his ordered, blank mind came a certain image. An unbidden memory which shattered his focus with a sense of profound inadequacy: Asuka in her Junior Tactical Officer's uniform, clipboard in hand. Always talking to other people. Ordering, reporting. Doing something.

This is what _I_ do, Shinji thought to himself sourly. This is all I can do. Pilot.

His self-disgust was breaking synchronicity with Unit One. Parts of the entry plug that had gone silent hummed back to life as his synch rate fell. Soon only the A10 connections remained.

Piloting Eva was like treading water, working so hard to go nowhere at all. Asuka had moved forward. She had friends. Authority. A career. Shinji was exactly where he had started three years ago when they had dropped him into Unit One and told him to fight.

It wasn't all bad, of course. He had finally learned how to swim. Ayanami had taught him, floating beside him as he clumsily paddled along, sinking with him and then rising. She had shown him that to stay afloat, one need only observe a simple set of physical laws. In the entry plug now, he visualized himself floating, buoyant, his nose just above the metaphorical waterline. Just the A10 nerves. He could feel the depth yawning wide beneath him, the place where Eva's senses would subsumed his own. He took in a deep breath of LCL, and once again dove.

Though he had experienced it numerous times before - the feeling of connections in his brain slowly turning over to receive input from elsewhere - it was still very strange. He dove until he could feel the weight of Unit One's armor on his flesh. Vision came next, a fixed view of the Eva cage outside. The Eva's eyesight possessed a particular range and clarity that was more disorienting than the process of diving down to that level by itself. Colors were more vibrant and vivid, the purple-red of the suspension bakelite, the orange of a technician's uniform. The greenish-reddish-tint to the walkways that appeared as only a mute gray to Shinji's own eyes.

The process of diving focused his attention to a single point, and away from his problems, and today there seemed to be a lot of problems to avoid, so Shinji dove with a solid determination... until the shudder came over him.

It hit him all at once, stranger even than the Evangelion's vivid sight. Fixing his mind in place so as to maintain his current depth, he blindly opened a comm channel to Ayanami. Perhaps the sensation was external, perhaps an Angel was attacking headquarters.

"Are you feeling this?" he asked.

"Feeling what?" came the soft reply.

"...nothing." The vibration must be some aspect of Eva he had not yet encountered. He closed the channel and tried to mute the vibration with a force of will, as someone sick would seek to smother a chill, and instantly the screech of alarms brought him out of depth. Shinji shot to the metaphorical surface, then severed even his A10 connections. The entry plug was awash in red, and several comm channels had opened, faces peering in at him from all directions...

He cut the alarms, cut the comm, then re-established a channel with Test Control. A query from Ayanami flashed in his peripheral vision, but he ignored it for the moment.

"W-what just happened?" he asked Lieutenant Ibuki. The backlash from such rapid de-synchronization had left him disoriented.

"We aren't..." she was looking at something off-screen. "We aren't sure. The MAGI just tripped your internal alarms and the one here, I'm looking at the data... Look, just stay at that level for a minute, will you?"

Shinji wordlessly closed the channel and laid back. Operating at any depth exceeding the A10 connection limits was really only useful for delicate work, or if the entry plug failed on him. It wore him out quickly, and if he got so much as grazed in combat, the pain would quickly send him into shock.

* * *

The sync test had been live, the Children actually present in their Eva, and after it was concluded Shinji met with Ayanami outside Unit Zero's cage. It was only a little out of the way. They walked to Test Control together, as usual, and were the last to arrive.

There were ten Children currently training alongside Shinji and Ayanami. They all wore gray plugsuits, and Shinji had a great deal of trouble telling them apart. Five girls, five boys, ten people he did not know. Right now, they were so eager it made Shinji feel ill. Only two had seen actual combat.

Maya Ibuki went down the line, giving each pilot a personalized critique. The two senior pilots waited at the end, Shinji sitting in one of the technician chairs because his middle ear was still a little out of whack following his dive. When she reached them, Maya reported that, as usual, Ayanami had managed to hold her 80 sync rate. Then she turned to Shinji.

"What exactly were you doing in Unit One, Shinji," the tech asked, examining something at the bottom of her clipboard. "Did you deploy its AT Field on purpose?"

AT Field? "No, what do you mean? I thought the Eva wasn't powered."

"It wasn't," Ibuki rocked back on her heels. "But somehow, Unit One's AT Field unfurled after you hit 185 and..." she looked at the clipboard again, "everything in the cage lost ten pounds."

* * *

"Did you understand any of that?" Shinji asked Ayanami as they proceeded below Test Control to the senior pilot locker room.

"It appears that you deployed Unit One's AT Field and polarized it to the magnetic field of the surrounding area," the First Child replied.

Shinji thought about that. Eva had senses and organs man did not - he had experienced several of them firsthand. That hum must have been how an Evangelion perceived magnetism. He was just clever enough to understand that. Ayanami though...

Ayanami had quit school several months ago, shortly after Asuka had been pulled off piloting duty. The First Child now seemed to spend most of her time in the company of the Commander, Lieutenant Ibuki or Doctor Akagi and her Section Two escort. When Shinji had asked about this, Ayanami had replied that her educational focus was being narrowed. He had pressed her about it - because with her gone he had no one to talk with at school - and she had replied flatly that his security clearance did not allow her to discuss the particulars with him.

It was pretty clear to Shinji what she was working on. Of late she had demonstrated a grasp of the science behind Eva that totally eluded him. Like Asuka, Ayanami was going on ahead. Despite this, the two Children still found enough conversation to be... well, Shinji supposed they were friends now, or close acquaintances.

They arrived at what Shinji had come to think of as the senior pilot locker room - Shinji and Ayanami were the only active pilots aware of its existence. This was where they had prepared for sortie against the Fifth Angel, and the three original Children had used it on a regular basis following sync and harmonic tests. The trainees used the newer facilities attached to Test Control.

Shinji proceeded through one door, Ayanami through the other. The single room was divided by a translucent screen.

As they changed, Shinji asked what had become in his mind 'the question', the answer to which usually determined whether or not he was going to have a good day.

"Are you hungry, Ayanami?" he asked through the partition.

"Certainly," was her soft response.

And everything seemed a little brighter.

* * *

The commissary food was truly awful. Shinji found himself eating sushi he was perfectly certain had been produced before Second Impact. The seaweed had a wet cardboard texture, and the "crab" - pollack, of course - was a violent shade of fluorescent orange going on yellow. Ayanami or no, he had to work up an appetite to stand this garbage.

I really should start making lunch for us, Shinji thought. He certainly owed Ayanami as much. With Touji and Kensuke shipped off to New Yokohama and the situation at the Katsuragi apartment being what it was, he had no one but her to talk to. And he felt bad about that. About dumping all his garbage onto her. So he was careful to ensure that what he did with the First Child could be described as 'conversation', and not a one-sided rant.

Today Shinji spoke of the strange sensation he had experienced in Eva, the feeling magnetism shaking in his bones. Ayanami talked about the flowers her neighbor was trying to cultivate on the balcony adjacent to her own. He talked about the Horaki's visit. She described the recent activities of Keicha, the kitten she had adopted not too long ago.

When the meal ended and the conversation died, they both took their serving trays to the disposal. As Shinji was saying goodbye, the First Child interrupted him:

"I want to show you something."

* * *

The first time Shinji had been down to Terminal Dogma, Doctor Akagi had taken him. Back when she had gone rogue and destroyed the dummy plug system before his eyes. Ayanami was taking him by the same route. At least Shinji thought it was the same route. They had left the cold blue hallways of Central Dogma and descended into a series of corridors which were sterile white, with intermittent segments of red. He easily remembered this part of the journey from three years ago. Descending to a place he knew was beyond his security clearance. The though made him stray closer to Ayanami than he otherwise might have. He nearly collided with her when the girl stopped before a random door. He quickly backed up.

Ayanami turned to regard him. "Is something the matter?" she asked.

"I'm not sure I'm supposed to be here," he admitted sadly, certain she would send him back.

"You were not," the girl replied, turning back to the door... but was that a hint of a smile on her face? Shinji couldn't be sure. "I had your clearance upgraded."

Beyond the door was an elevator, cylindrical and transparent. The shaft they descended appeared to be composed of a double helix of light. Beyond the elevator was a landscape that, along with the disintegrating dummy plug system, sometimes haunted Shinji's dreams. The ground was bone white and glowed - there was no other source of illumination that he could see, but everything was clearly visible. Spires shot up at random, some small enough to jump over, others towering several hundred meters in the air. The residue of Unit One and Two's clash during the Seventeenth Angel incident was still visible: Eva-sized footprints, dark splotches of blood. To fight Kaworu, that had been the second time Shinji had visited Terminal Dogma.

The elevator stopped several hundred meters above the surface, the doors opening into a small room. Ayanami entered and began typing on a computer console installed in the wall.

The third time Shinji had been down in Terminal Dogma his father had taken him to ground level, led him over that strange surface, what he had called 'hallowed ground.' It had crunched beneath Shinji's feet. On that day beyond Heaven's Gate the Commander of NERV had explained... many things to him.

Shinji was not yet completely jaded to the vast mysteries that surrounded him, many of which his father had hinted at but not explained. So when the lights came on and the small room he and Ayanami were in turned out to be an observation deck overlooking four Evangelions in-assembly, he was... 'extremely surprised' went a long way to describe it. Ayanami gestured left, then right, then made a circle with one finger extended. Shinji looked left, then right, then all around.

More than ten, was his first thought. Ten, eleven, thirteen. Thirteen Evangelions ringed Terminal Dogma in a continuous Eva cage recessed from the white, hallowed ground. They were in various states of completion. All appeared to be of the same schema, ash-gray armor with smooth, featureless faces. Each was suspended to the waist in bakelite, and Shinji could see bulkheads in place to seal each Eva off entirely for full immersion.

"This is my work," the First Child was saying. "This is what I have made with my own hands."

"Rei," Shinji breathed, for a moment forgetting himself. "This is _amazing_."

The First Child entered another command into the console, and the observation deck began to move. It was actually a tram, running along a rail that ringed Terminal Dogma as the cage did. Each Evangelion was surrounded by an array of complex robotics, and what appeared to be apparatus for inserting an entry plug. As his sense of awe faded and became a confused mix of pride and envy, Shinji noticed that something about the ash-gray armor is a little off.

"These are based off a new phenotype," Ayanami said, stopping the transport before one of the Eva and leading Shinji onto the balcony overlooking it. "Given our finite resources and the necessity for us to constantly expand our combat ability, I developed this."

Closer to the Unit, Shinji could see it was covered in a different sort of matter from the smooth and shiny alloy of Unit One's armor. The surface was pitted and had a chalky, mute look to it. There were no extrusions around the Eva's joints, nor was there socketing for a shoulder harness. That was what had seemed off about the configuration before.

"This is not armor," Ayanami said, studying his face, then looking up at the Unit. "It is a grown thing, a self-limiting substrate that can form a lightweight latticework of certain durable materials during immersion in a saturated bakelite solution."

Before, she had spoken in generalities about her work. Now Shinji wished she would return to doing so. It was like Doctor Akagi or Lieutenant Ibuki was speaking to him... but Ayanami?

"The design is to absorb kinetic energy, not deflect it," the strange person before him continued. "This generated armor is inferior to that used on habitant Units, but should have similar stamina in short-term engagements."

Habitant. That was a word Shinji had not heard before, but he could guess at its meaning.

"Dummy plugs, all of them?" he managed.

Here Ayanami looked at him steadily. "Yes.

"But they have a friend-foe identification system, and are limited by an umbilical cable and a single type-D battery backup. And an N2 mine is implanted inside the dummy plug, should something go wrong."

Shinji lowered himself to the ground, there being nowhere else to sit, and let it all just wash over him:

"I wanted to show you this, Ikari, because I won't be a pilot for much longer."

Don't laugh.

"I enjoy..."

Don't LAUGH!

"...talking with you. But this will take up the majority of my attention until the Unit Fifteen series is complete."

He knew what she was about to say, and it just stupefied him. He could actually, for once, understand something about Rei Ayanami.

"You may visit me here whenever you wish, so long as these visits are not especially prolonged."

Say it.

"Lunch or dinner here would be acceptable."

And Shinji laughed, and Ayanami's face changed, became guarded, neutral. Shinji laughed so hard tears sprang from his eyes. He wiped them away and fought to suppress the bone-crushing depression that seemed ready to set in and stay.

What did this beautiful, scary-intelligent young woman want him to do?

She wants him to...

"Asuka is a Junior Tactical Officer," he began. "You built... all this!"

"And me?" He laughed again, "I can **cook**."

* * *

Back at the Katsuragi apartment. Shinji stared down at the empty pot, hating himself. He should not have been so impolite, so honest with Ayanami. That open expression she had worn when she unveiled those gray Eva, it had been like she was talking to his father. She had looked at him, spoken to him... she had _taken the initiative,_ and now probably regretted doing so. He had laughed, not at her but at himself, and that open expression had vanished. She must have thought he was mocking her.

Shinji put three cups of water in the pot, threw in a few sprigs of mint.

He had made her close herself off again. What a worthless person he was.

The water simmered on the edge of boil. He put in a cooked half-pound of roast to soak.

The rice cooker clicked off and he was all motion, losing himself in preparations, avoiding the fact that his developed skills did not aide pilots on the battlefield nor produce a fleet of automated Evangelions.

With desperate energy, he went about his task. The dessert he was preparing was a Chinese confection made out of sweet rice. Shinji wasn't sure what it was called, but when one bit into it there was supposed to be a particular sound, like boots moving through stiff snow.

Or sneakers treading over hallowed ground, the Third Child thought randomly.

Asuka and the Horaki sisters arrived home as he was finishing up the paste the dessert would be composed of. The former Second Child passed through the entryway, wordlessly walked past Shinji in the kitchen, and plopped down on the couch in the living room and turned on the television. Hikari came in next, greeting Shinji and chatting with him a bit before disappearing into Asuka's room and then joining the Junior Tactical Officer on the couch. They began to play a video game.

The key with the rice-cake was to keep the paste spongy, rather than compressing it. Shinji carefully kneaded the substance into a sheet of six circular molds that he also used to make gelatin and muffins, and was just putting this into the freezer (for thirty minutes, any more and they would freeze solid) when Kodama Horaki arrived.

"Hey Mister Ikari," she greeted, sitting at the kitchen table. "You shoulda come with us. Great sun."

"Welcome home," Shinji greeted in return.

"You need help with any of this, huh?" she was suddenly at his shoulder, watching as he pulled the mint-soaked roast from the oven.

"No, I am nearly done." He slid the roast onto a wooden cutting board, sliced through the rope binding it, and began segmenting the meat. As he did this, he became aware that Kodama was_ very _close, her chest, bare but for a lime-green bikini top, brushing up against the back of his arm. He could smell her suntan lotion. Honeysuckle.

"You can do this, if you like," he said, moving to one side and offering the young woman the handle of the cutting knife.

"Oh, I'm horrible at this sort of thing. I was just going to offer up Hikari's services as a -"

"Don't you dare!" called a voice from the living room. Asuka.

"Hey, stop eavesdropping!" Kodama called back.

Shinji left the meat unsliced for the moment. Instead he opened the fridge, glanced at the dessert (about twenty minutes to go), and got out a bottle of pickles. Using chopsticks, he extracted a dozen sour crescents into a condiment dish, all the while aware that the eldest Horaki was drifting toward him, seeming to appreciate the various projects he was undertaking around the kitchen.

He glanced at the clock. The Major would probably be home in fifteen minutes.

Placing the filled condiment tray and the pickle bottle back in the fridge (no good having soft pickles, a bit of cold would keep them crisp), Shinji rounded the table, evading Kodama's fridge-ward progress. The udon was done, and he took it off the stove, tossing a handful of chopped scallion into the cooling water and stirring it.

"Shoo," Hikari was saying, coming up behind Kodama and poking the other girl with her finger. "Shoo!"

The older girl laughed and then joined Asuka in the living room.

"Sorry Ikari," Hikari went to the sink and began to wash her hands. "I should have offered. Um... what is this?" she was gesturing to the roast.

Shinji added another dash of dried herbage to the udon and then came over, taking up the knife and cutting away a piece of roast, then segmenting that piece into eight smaller pieces.

"For the soup and rice," he explained. "Have to slice it about a half-inch... oh. Are you Buddhist?" What a stupid thing to do. He should have asked the Horakis about dietary restrictions.

"No... I just don't use it much. Too expensive," Hikari blushed a little, gingerly took the knife from Shinji. "I'm sure it will be delicious."

The Third Child returned to his own work, stirring the udon again and then setting the table. He put out four settings, figuring he would bathe while the others ate - he still stank of LCL. The last time he had tried using the shower in the senior pilot locker room, Ayanami had joined him... so he didn't shower down there anymore. And he had not felt like using the larger facilities on the upper levels of the Geo-Front after ascending from Terminal Dogma either - hadn't really felt like doing much of anything after what had happened in Terminal Dogma. Going to the market and buying ingredients for dinner had made him feel a little better.

"Please don't let Kodama get to you," Hikari was saying. "She... her commercial just started playing and she is a little... happier than usual."

"Commercial?" Shinji asked.

"Would you like straight, white teeth today? Over your lunch break?" called a voice from the living room.

"...yeah, her first..." and here Hikari directed her voice to the living room, "Sister's first job, ever!"

The two girls shared a cheer, and Shinji heard Asuka congratulate the eldest Horaki as well. Kodama then launched into a full recitation of the commercial, and as she did Hikari edged over to Shinji and leaned in close.

"Are things all right?" she asked.

Shinji took a half step back - to get a bowl from the cabinet. This was turning out to be a very strange day. All this... proximity.

"Are you and Asuka fighting or something?" she pressed, again closing the distance. "She was fine in May, and that was after they stopped letting her pilot. She is," Hikari stirred the udon as she passed it, "acting kind of... sullen."

"I wouldn't really know," Shinji responded in a low voice. "We don't really talk."

* * *

The Major arrived ten minutes later than Shinji had expected, which was thirty minutes later than it should have taken her to get from NERV to the apartment.

"Welcome home," Shinji greeted without looking up, the sound of Katsuragi's tread in the outer hallway easy to distinguish. "Dinner is ready."

"What did you say to her?" was the response. Shinji looked up. The Major stood in the entryway, staring at him.

"...yes?"

"Rei. What did you say to her?"

"I... today?"

"Yeah." her voice had a sarcastic edge. "Today."

"She... s-she showed me..." why was she so angry? "Her work and I..." Oh, this won't sound good "I..."

He swallowed. "What is wrong?"

Katsuragi went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. Glanced at the girls in the living room.

"Balcony," she finally said. "Now."

* * *

It was too cold on the balcony. At dusk the wind always came hard off the sixth Ashino lake. They went into Shinji's room instead.

The Third Child tried to explain what had gone on, and why he had laughed. This was very difficult, in part because Shinji did not wish to discuss his growing sense of inadequacy with the Major. When he finished, the woman glared for several seconds before responding.

"Apologize."

"I'm..."

"Not. To. Me."

"W-what happened?" he asked.

"Rei came to me. We talked. Apologize tomorrow."

She walked out. The conversation was over.

* * *

The Major made things easy for the Horakis. She actually loosened up a little and talked with them, laughing and telling jokes. It was like having Misato back for a while. Shinji did not want to ruin it, and so stayed silent for most of the meal. Though to be honest, the effort it took to keep his food on the table and deal with Kodama's elbows precluded conversation anyway.

When pilot and CO emerged from the room, the girls had been preparing to eat. Shinji had pulled the dessert from the fridge (three minutes late. Dammit), placed it on the counter, and had been moving for the washroom when Kodama grabbed him. Now he was sharing a side of the table with her, nodding awkwardly whenever someone complimented the food and trying to establish some personal space, which mostly involved keeping his bowl on the table.

Too many people, too close. And suddenly everyone was staring at him. What had they been talking about?

"Well?" Kodama asked.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Do you want to join us at the beach tomorrow."

"I have school."

Asuka let out a short laugh.

"It'll be fun," Kodama promised. "Just the sand, the sun, and some ludicrously overpriced drinks which," she extracted a piece of meat from her soup and held it up, "you can clearly afford to buy for us."

Shinji looked at the Major, who was working on her third beer. The older woman shrugged.

"You have something to do tomorrow Shinji. Beyond that, it's up to you. Just make sure you take the cell phone."

He wished she had told him to concentrate on school. Six months ago she would have insisted on it. One last option.

"Is that alright?" he looked at Asuka. "I don't want to intrude."

The red head took a bite of her food and shrugged. Noncommittal. Not a single word.

* * *

The knock came at 5:20, ten minutes before his alarm clock would have gone off. Shinji was already awake, staring straight ahead, enjoying the close dark of his windowless room, his mind pleasantly frothing with dreams of the night before. The fevered state was an after-effect of diving deep into Eva. It took him a moment to get to his feet, and the knock came again.

"Coming," he said, switching on the light and retrieving a shirt from the hamper at the foot of his bed. He put this on, ignoring the slight tinge of mold. Asuka was the one washing clothes these days, and she hadn't bothered to do his since the Horakis had shown up.

Kodama was at the door, wearing the pink nightshirt from the previous morning and light pants of the same material. The girl's expression was, for once, solemn.

"Do you have any flour?" the girl asked.

Shinji just stared.

"Come on," the girl jerked her head toward the living room.

* * *

They were on the balcony. The sun had not yet begun to rise, and the air was still and pleasantly cool. Shinji stood by the door, watching Kodama spill a pound of flour onto the floor. The girl patted it down, and then stood.

"So," she said. "Have you decided to join us today?"

The boy shook his head. "I have a test coming up, I need the notes."

"The test is just over what is in your book, right?"

Shinji shrugged. Kodama's nipples had grown hard in the cool air, and he was trying not to notice.

"I don't just do commercials, you know." Kodama went over to the open balcony door, glanced inside, then closed it. "I'm also a stage actor."

"O-okay."

"So..." she yanked a lounge chair from under the small table that was kept on the balcony, walked over to Shinji, and forced him to sit in it. "You just sit here for a second. Be my audience, yeah?"

Shinji nodded, trying to work out if he was still asleep or not. Maybe the dive into Eva had left him more mixed up than he had thought.

Kodama went to the balcony door, squared her shoulders, turn.

"I'll be doing three people, adopting slight but distinct mannerisms for each," she explained. It sounded like she was reading a script.

"Setting. After a long drive down from New Yokohama, the Horaki sisters are greeted by their dear friend, Miss Asuka Langley Sohryu in the upscale apartment she shares with her guardian and a certain boy." Kodama gestured to him, a sly smile on her face.

"After an opening round of greetings, the merry band settles into a cycle of slumberparty, exchanging gifts, watching girl movies, maybe playing _particular _variations of poker. After this and helping ourselves to some of your guardian's delightful beer, the girls make their way to the balcony with a box of oatmeal in hand. Oh what could be their intention?"

This struck Shinji as being a very good question.

Now Kodama knelt by the flour and started speaking **_in her sister's voice_** "This is silly, I feel like I'm twelve again."

She drew katakana in the flour - 'Touji'. Then she patted it down.

"Well, I did it once at your age, and it worked for _me_," Kodama declared in her own voice, drawing another name in the flour - 'Kitaro'.

"Little do her two friends suspect that this is a ruse," the girl narrated in stage whisper. "For Kodama was in fact no longer seeing Kitaro Kumiguchi, him being a hopeless fucking fascist."

"Okay Asuka," Hikari's voice. "Your turn."

"Let's just do it with those two." It was an approximation of Asuka's voice. Kodama got the accent right, but the tone was too soft to be Asuka.

"Oh come on! I know you have someone you like, Asuka," Hikari's voice.

"No."

"A travesty! Young and beautiful Miss Sohryu shall abstain! How cruel, how cruel. But the Horakis, one of them at least, are clever, and know a way to trick fair Asuka. The lovely Kodama sends her sister for more snacks, and then excuses herself on pretext of going to washroom, leaving the Lady Langley on the balcony with that smooth oatmeal, which begs to be written upon. Unknown to all but herself, Kodama secretly hides just inside the apartment, behind the blinds, and watches the girl."

Kodama stood, went over to the lip of the balcony, hunching over and resting her arms and face against the rail. Then she turned, glared at the flour, knelt next to it, and carefully drew three katakana: 'Shinji'.

Then she rubbed the flour blank.

"Upon returning..." Kodama began. Stopped. Shinji was standing.

"It doesn't mean anything," he said.

"I'm pretty sure it does."

"You don't... who are you, anyway?"

Kodama knelt and started gathering the flour into her hands.

"I'm the girl on the balcony," she said, lifting two handfuls of white, and then tossing them over the edge of the balcony. "I'm the girl telling you that you need to come with us today."

"I have something I have to do today."

"Then do it before we go."

"There is nothing to do at the beach," Shinji said, starting to the balcony doors. Kodama blocked him.

"There will be girls in-bikini, Mister Ikari," she began. "And Murakami novels and the ocean and those frizzy drinks I mentioned. I promise, you'll have fun."

"That doesn't sound like fun," Shinji replied evenly.

"Come on," she said. "Seeing Sohryu in a bikini isn't reason enough? I'll make sure you have a good time."

Shinji said nothing.

"Please Shin?"


	4. Chapter 4

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**(One of Three) - ((She wore a Raspberry beret the kind u find in a second hand store - Prince))

* * *

Her neck. Shinji noticed it as she bent over the display at the ice cream shop. The line from her chin down to the hem of her blouse. Bare flesh that focused and awoke in him a particular awareness.

Kodama Horaki had taken him to an ice cream shop. She said she wanted a snack before joining the girls at the beach. But this was something... this was a date kind of thing, wasn't it? Shinji wasn't sure.

The people at school talked about going to karaoke bars, video arcades, studying together. Ramen shops on quiet corners. Busy malls. Shrines. Weekend trips. Date things.

But... he barely knew her. A date thing - that was a silly notion, Shinji decided as Kodama turned to him.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Shinji looked at the tubs of sorbet behind the glass. None was a single pure color. Mixed textures - some smooth, some jellied and torn. Kind of disgusting.

Just pick one, he thought.

"How about watermelon?" Kodama saved him a reluctant choice. "Had it yesterday, it was great!"

"Sure," he replied, thankful. "What are you getting, Miss Horaki?"

He could instantly tell that annoyed her. Using her last name like that. It had been a force of habit.

"I'm thinking about this," she tapped the glass to indicate one tub of glistening brown, "or this," she indicated something green with black streaks in it, "_Mister_ Ikari."

Shinji shivered. No more of that.

"Well... Horaki," he began, carefully omitting the honorific, "do you like... uh..." he bent to read the labels, which were in a very stylized katakana.

Green. Mint. Of course, stupid.

"That soup this morning? Was it too bitter for you?"

"No. _Ikari_."

"Ah. Well..." he indicated the brown sorbet. Something chocolaty. "You should get this. I didn't have any fish stock and had to season the miso with mint to get it to taste right and, well, I've kind of noticed that when I get to cooking I sometimes lose my taste for..."

Finish. Get to the point. What are you doing?

"If you've already tasted mint today, that" he pointed to the green mint sorbet, "probably won't be as good. Taste as good, I mean. As it might otherwise."

He caught his breath.

Horaki looked at him, seeming to think about his advice. Or was she trying to intimidate him?

"Huh," she said. "They're blue. Okay. Chocolate."

Blue?

_She isn't Asuka._

Blue.

He blinked. Oh.

She ordered for them. And she paid.

His sorbet was Unit Two red. The watermelon seeds were flakes of dark chocolate that tasted... well, interesting anyway. Really more of a distraction to the conversation held in the booth. It went like this:

Shinji Ikari? Lived with his teacher until he was fourteen and started working for NERV. Currently lives with his superior and another NERV employee.

Kodama Horaki. Graduated high-school first in her class. Accepted into Kyushu University at New Fukuoka as a pre-med. Second year, took one semester abroad that turned into four. Came back and enrolled in an acting course at a school in New Fukuoka ran by some actor Shinji had never heard of. Tried to attend both the University and acting school at once - but eventually chose to drop the University. Father wasn't thrilled. That was a year ago. Since then she had performed four production plays of Shakespeare - in English. Bit part, small role, then main role twice. No lead parts though, not yet.

The dentist commercial was a big deal.

"But," Horaki said, her sorbet pushed to one side and forgotten, "I'm talking too much. What about you, Ikari?"

"What else did you want to know? Compared to what you've done, I don't... well, there isn't much for me to say."

"School? You have any University picked out? Entrance exams set, that sort of thing?"

It felt like the floor had been pulled out from under him. Shinji stayed quiet for a moment. Ate a bit more of his sorbet. Looked not at Horaki but down at his hands, and said:

"I can't talk to you about my job. I'm sure you already know that."

"I didn't..."

"I-I know. I know. Just... I'm..."

He laughed, and it wasn't bitter or despairing. It was a happy laugh. He was finally saying it. "I'm the worst student in my class."

"I usually have to miss one day out of five. Sometimes I have to miss weeks at a time. Once, I showed up at school following a six day absence to find the mid-year break had started.

"I don't have a University picked out, because I won't be allowed to attend one. I can't leave this area. New Yokohama is too far away. I..." he started laughing again, wasn't sure he'd be able to stop this time.

"I'll be working for NERV for a _very_ long time." Until every last Angel is dead. Or Third Impact.

"Bullshit," Horaki grinned. "Vacation?"

Shinji shook his head. "Nothing ten miles beyond the limits of Tokyo 3. The beach you seem to be taking me to can be used as a staging area during an An-" classified, dammit. Like she doesn't know. "an attack. That's probably why it's okay."

"Just Tokyo 3."

Shinji nodded.

"And you can't leave... ever?"

"For a.." mission? assignment? "Only if I'm working."

"Well, why the Hell are you doing this then?" she reached out and covered one of his hands, which was suddenly a fist, with her own.

A connection. Light. Physical. Enough. Six months without any sort of human contact made this passing gesture of kindness a pleasure.

"I can't not do it," he said quietly. Please don't let Section Two debrief her for this.

"You can't quit."

"I... no."

"They're forcing you."

"Not exactly... I..." and he couldn't say it. The truth was predicated on too many classified events, implying connections and people and causalities he could not talk to Horaki about.

"A story," he said. "Okay. You wanted something about me? About two years ago, back before my friends left and went to New Yokohama, this girl asked me to escort her to some event. A carnival. I mean a traditional carnival. Produced by the school. Me and Touji and Kensuke were in charge of buying enough goldfish for the game tank. Anyway, this girl in my class, who I've never talked to before, asks me to go with her to this event. _Go_ with her.

"I make the mistake of telling the Major, who made a big deal about it. Made Asuka take me shopping for a formal kimono - Hikari might've mentioned... nevermind. Anyway, the night comes, the girl shows up at the apartment and thankfully she's just wearing a skirt and shirt, because I have this really nice kimono set out on my bed that I don't want to wear and would need help to even put on.

"She looks nice. I mean, she is wearing makeup, and not badly from what I can tell. She smells nice. And it hits me halfway to the carnival, on the train. The way she's standing just a bit closer than she might at school if we passed each other in the hallway. The way she's aware of what I'm doing.

"It feels nice. We talk. We go to the carnival and have an okay time, but I'm having a bit more fun because I'm with her. The... novelty of it, I guess. We meet up with her friends, we meet up with my friends, but we don't separate until the end of the night, when we say 'bye' to one another. It was awkward and terrifying and I only saved face by keeping quiet most of the time, but walking back from that I felt... happy."

Shinji looked down at his sorbet, now partially melted.

"The next day she isn't at school. She is officially excused.

"The day after that she's at school, but not talking to me. She looks... scared. I'm... well, a little concerned. So I go over there during lunch and asked her what was wrong. Her friend speaks for her. This friend says some people from NERV's security agency came and took her and her family away the morning after the carnival. They were 'debriefed.'

"I said something that night, said a name or a title or a date that I should not have, and this girl and her family got thrown in a cell for a whole day.

"I did not understand. I've probably let a lot of classified information slip to my friends, my classmates. Why did it have to be this one girl?"  
Shinji's mouth was dry.

"The Major did not have an answer. So I went h-higher than that. I asked the Commander..."

"You mean your..."

Shinji interrupted before she could finish, "and he said..."

He spooned up the remaining unmelted sorbet.

"Well, that was his way of telling me to stop. Sharing that part of my life with people outside NERV, I mean."

The story wasn't just for Kodama. It was to remind Shinji of something crucial. There were some aspects of life he would simply never understand. He saw a kind of idyllic madness in his classmates, in their bonding and romance and young drama. He lived in the shadow of that comfortable reality. The pain and secrecy surrounding Eva and the Angels was a bare, inescapable truth that made the mundane stuff everyone else seemed to enjoy utterly unattainable to him.

Even if this was a date thing he was doing with Horaki? It did not matter. She could satisfy her curiosity to the limits of Section Two tolerance, and then?

"I knew there was some secrecy involved..." she was saying.

There was no future in this. Being here would mean nothing tomorrow.

"...seeing as me and Hikari had to sign this non-disclosure agreement before even heading down here."

...what?

"Yeah," she brought her dish up and sipped some of her now melted sorbet. "From your story, I think it must of had something to do with that bombing in Germany."

"The what?" he asked, feeling stupid. Anxious. What did that mean, a non-disclosure agreement?

"The... that bomb that went off in the... I thought it was NERV's German office, maybe I'm not remembering it right. Happened maybe two years ago? Seems like they were making a big deal about tightening security. You don't remember that? It was all over the news in America."

He would have remembered it. If someone had actually bothered to tell him.

"Yeah, had to go through a security screening at the New Yokohama office," Horaki continued. "Signed a bunch of privacy releases. Talked to a guy in a black suit. No worse than Customs in the US, really. You done?"

Shinji nodded. They got up, threw their bowls away. Left the store and went out into bright sunlight and mild heat. The ice cream shop was just beyond the city limits, situated in a small shopping center off the main highway leading into Old Tokyo. Green hills rose around them, portions flattened and scarred from numerous battles.

Shinji imagined he could already smell the ocean.

They got into Horaki's ash-colored Honda and headed into the ruins of Old Tokyo.

"So," Kodama began. "Asuka."

"It was a trick," Shinji explained. There had been plenty of time to think on this. "Asuka, she probably knew you were watching."

"Doesn't seem like she would really have a reason to do that, Ikari," Kodama said airily. "And obviously you don't completely believe that, or you wouldn't be here."

"She might have done it so this would happen. So this conversation would happen. Or maybe she wanted to see if she could get me to the beach. I don't know why. Asuka is... she's smarter than I am. I don't understand her."

"Well, okay. Her position is unknown, maybe she meant it, maybe she's playing around with you... and _me_,"Horaki began. "But again, you're still _here_. You only agreed to come after I told you what she had done."

The eldest Horaki let the conversation hang there. Shinji looked out the open window, watching the green rolling by, slowly giving over to shades of gray. Abandoned buildings rising from the encroaching forest, showing more than a decade of neglect. Trash and debris scattered on sealed-off streets, collecting against buildings and fencing.

"You like her," she prompted. "It's alight to admit that. I'm..."

"I came here because I wanted a break," he interrupted. "That's all."

"Then why not..."

"Can we not talk about Asuka? I... I know what you're trying to do, but..."

"What do you think I'm doing, Ikari?" Horaki asked. "What do you think this is?"

"You're trying... you think that Asuka wants to, ah, be in a relationship with me."

"And?" she prompted.

"You're trying to help with that."

"Wrong!" it was a verbal pounce. The young woman clearly relished it.

"Then why...?"

"I'm just being polite."

Shinji silently chided himself for misreading the situation so badly. This young woman had been nice enough to talk to him about Asuka back at the apartment. He barely knew her. Of course she was just being polite.

His story about the carnival was now an embarrassment. He never put that much of himself forward. What had he been thinking?

Tomorrow, this won't mean anything, he reminded himself. This is just time passing.

Horaki looked at him. Back at the road. Looked again.

"You don't get it, do you," she finally said.

No, Shinji thought, his gaze returning to the ruins. I don't understand anything.

There were no cars in the fenced-off area. The government must have removed them. The distant skyline would have looked like that of any inhabited city had two of the buildings not been partially collapsed, and the windows reflecting the morning light not been interrupted by shattered panes.

"So what happened to your shoulder?"

The psychosomatic injury he had received from the latest Angel had crept over the top of his shoulder and down to his collarbone during the night. It had changed color too, from a sick green-blue to a sallow color just a bit darker than the rest of his skin. It barely hurt anymore.

Shinji jerked his collar back, covering the bruise. He had meant for it to be covered.

"I got it during the last... the last attack," he said.

"I thought you piloted a giant robot or something!" Horaki exclaimed. "How... I mean..."

"Pilots have to..." He stopped. "That non-disclosure agreement, that means you can't repeat anything I say?"

"Yeah, that's basically what it means."

"Because if I say any more, you might..."

"Don't worry about it, Ikari. The scary men in New Yokohama did a good job informing me of how NERV handles security breaches." Pause. "I'd tell you how they do it, but they made me sign a non-disclosure agreement."

Shinji cracked a thin smile. Okay then, if she was certain. He would be polite. He would help time pass for her, too.

"When you pilot an Eva, you connect with it," Shinji began. "The entry plug - where the pilot sits, is situated between the..." he stopped.

Brain. Spinal cord. Nervous system. He could tell Kodama Horaki all that. And she might not be grabbed by Section Two for it, but did she really need to know? It had taken Shinji a while to come to terms with the nature of Eva. So far as he knew, most people thought the Evangelion was, as Horaki had put it, a 'giant robot.'

No. Kodama Horaki could not truly be confidant to anything.

"Well, the entry plug takes readings of the pilot's brainwaves and uses them to control some parts of Eva." Not technically a lie.

"Sometimes pilots get feedback from the system, and their... well, it sends signals to my brain that can register as pain, or travel through my nervous system and cause stuff like this," he indicated his shoulder.

That was all a lie. There seemed to be a level at which his body simply mirrored the Eva's condition. He had been at a sub-100 sync rate, using the entry plug's targeting computer, when the Angel had sliced into him from behind. If he had been anywhere above 100, if he had gone to the depth where his senses and Eva's seemed to blur, he would probably have cuts on his back instead of bruises. It had happened before. He could not explain it. That was just the way things were.

"So... your robot got smashed up pretty bad?"

"Well... four of us deployed. Me and Ayanami and..."

"So Miss Ayanami is a pilot too?" Horaki interjected. "But she has another job at NERV as well?"

Earlier in the morning, when he had finally been allowed off the balcony, Shinji had begun preparing a lunch for Ayanami. It was the best apology he could think of. Horaki had sat at the kitchen as he worked, eating samples of what he was cooking. Shinji did not have many vegetarian recipes, and had needed to improvise a great deal. Horaki had been _polite_ enough to give him feedback. Polite enough to drop him off at NERV to deliver Ayanami's meal while she took her sister and Asuka to the beach, and then return for him.

He had spoken to her about the First Child, given her an abridged explanation for the meal he was cooking.

"She won't be piloting for much longer," Shinji answered. "Anyway, she and I and two other pilots deployed. These two other pilots were... well, they'd only been training for a few months."

"Green," Horaki supplied.

"Sure," Shinji accepted the term. "Green. Me and Ayanami split up, and we each took one of the other pilots. The..._Angel_" he had to force the word out, "was hiding, so we started a search at the north end of the city, working south on parallel streets. The boy with me... no, I think it was actually a girl... well, she wasn't very used to moving her Eva yet. She was clumsy. We were lagging behind Ayanami by maybe two dozen blocks when the Angel attacked them. I climbed up one of the Sakajawi Financial buildings, trying to get a shot at this thing that's wrapped around Ayanami when something hits me from behind.

"It was a second Angel. Well, both were actually part of a single Angel that could split in two. We'd only seen that once before, and weren't really expecting it. That's how I got this bruise."

"So... how did the battle turn out?"

"The pilot I was with panicked and got wedged between two buildings trying to get away from the Angel. Ayanami and I managed to eliminate our targets separately."

The First Child had severed her companion's umbilical cable and used it to electrify the Angel, then crushed its core. Shinji had pinned the other half of the Angel with Unit One's AT Field, felt out the location of the core and ruptured it. Conventional close-quarters fighting came easily to him, especially when the opponent's AT Field was weak. At range he had to rely on the Eva's weapon systems, his finer control of the AT Field significantly diminishing beyond a few thousand feet. Becoming dangerous.

"Was anyone else hurt?"

"No."

The ocean was visible now, a flat dark blue peeking out between buildings. The highway ended abruptly, a series of concrete partitions guiding them onto a single off-ramp, which took the car onto a road overlooking the beach.

Broken buildings rose out of the surf several hundred feet from the shoreline, casting long shadows across the water and onto the sandy shore. The smell of the ocean, carried on a warm breeze, was slightly tainted with the odor of rotting concrete and rust. The area seemed developed - there were a few restaurants, shops, and what looked like a bath house, but on all sides of these rose piles of debris, fenced off with chain-link and razor wire.

They managed to park quite close to the shore itself. There were only a few other vehicles scattered across the long parking lot wedged between the road and beach.

"Well, it gets crowded during the weekend," Horaki offered as the two got out of the car. It seemed like an apology.

Shinji shook his head, "I don't really like crowds anyway."

"I know, but I..." Kodama was unbuttoning the front of her shirt and staring down the beach, then waving at someone. "There they are! But when I was trying to convince you to come, I was imagining the place a bit more... energetic."

She slipped her shirt off and opened the back of the car, wadding it into her day bag. She was wearing a dark blue bikini top. As Shinji collected his own duffel from the back seat, he tried not to look at her. And kept failing.

* * *

Ten minutes later he lay stomach-down on a towel in the shade of a beach umbrella, facing away from his companions and looking down the nearly-empty beach. One hand errantly dug into the sand, the strange pebbled dry-and-cool sensation reminding him of uncooked rice. The sound of the ocean, of waves crashing against the shore, made him sleepy and seemed strangely familiar.

He might have nodded off, if not for the erection.

A mistake. He had made a mistake, had known it the second Horaki emerged from the changing room.

Her swimsuit was... tiny. The bottom was low in the front, showing five inches of tight flesh below the navel. As she approached, he noticed the way her hair seemed to shine, the mismatched tan-lines on her shoulders, the light fuzz on her cheeks and arms and stomach.

Oh yes, he had made a mistake in coming here.

They had made their way across the hot sand, Shinji carrying a rented umbrella under one arm and his duffel bag across his chest - in hopes of hiding the bulge in his swimsuit.

Hikari had been quick to express dismay at her older sister's choice of beachwear. As Shinji had set up his umbrella he couldn't help but half-hear their conversation, the younger Hikari speaking low and fast.

He tried to filter it out, that embarrassing noise. Faced away from the girls as he figured out the umbrella and tried to will away his erection. He should have masturbated in the changing room, he chided himself. That would have settled it down for a while.

"Why are you wearing a night shirt, Third?"

That voice gave Shinji a start. It hadn't been directed to him in more than six months. Asuka was slowly circling around from behind, hands clasped at her back.

She knew. He turned his body to hide it, but she somehow already knew about his not-so-little problem.

"I got injured in the last attack," he explained as he lowered himself onto the blanket. "I didn't want to ... upset anyone."

Asuka stopped before him, knelt. She balanced on her thighs, legs slightly parted. Stared at him. Rocked forward, knees hitting the sand, her face quite close to his now.

"What happened," she asked, her tone now matching Hiraki's. Low and fast. "Did she tell you her life story? Hopes and dreams and all that _Shiest_? And let me guess, you told her about how much you hate piloting Eva. About how all you do is suffer. Engendering _sympathy_. Hoping for a _mercy fuck_."

As Asuka spoke, her legs spread wide. Shinji was avoiding eye contact, could see a few errant curly hairs where green bikini covered her groin.

"Take off that shirt," she said, rolling onto her feet and stalking away. "You look like a moron."

And now he was squeezing handfuls of sand, trying to focus on something other than the insistent knowledge that Asuka had been letting her pubic hair grow since he had last seen her naked. Thinking about _that_ was not helping him at all.

She didn't even _like him_! This was _stupid_! Why was he being made to feel like this by someone who hated him?

No, no. It wasn't hate, he realized. Wasn't anything as simple as hate. Eva had... done something to Asuka. The Major said it had affected her mind. That the damage might never go away. The way she acted toward him, and him alone... Shinji didn't know the first thing about the science of mental disorders or brain damage, but it was almost like... like he was poison to her. She had _friends_. She had a _job_. But when Asuka was around him she acted...

Shinji remembered that look on her face the last time they had been together. That haunting, lost expression.

He listened to the surf, the gulls flying overhead, the sparse sounds of humanity around him.

Six months, and she was no better.

The Major had said the damage might be permanent.

He was quite soft now. Limp. He rolled onto his back, pulling his duffel under his head, and stared into the sky.

In no time at all the birds, the surf, the heat had lulled him to..._  
_  
Shinji opened his eyes. Kodama was looking down at him. He was viewing her at a very... interesting angle.

"Ikari," she said. "You still owe us drinks."

* * *

The bar was made of crudely cut wood, covered in a milky-white laminate with an unpleasant texture. The bartender, a very old woman, was also unpleasant, though mercifully uninterested once she saw the NERV ID card.

"Military get alcohol. Doesn't matter how old you are," Asuka explained absently to Hikari and Kodama as they sat at one of several tables just inside the bar's shade. She was ignoring Shinji again.

There were two college-aged men sitting at the bar. They were watching the television mounted in one corner but occasionally, Shinji noticed, casting a speculative glance toward the girls. Both men had obvious tattoos, styled hair, expensive clothes. Fit the Yakuza stereotype so well it had to be fake, he decided.

Then again, he had never met a Yakuza before.

The girls noticed too, and pointedly scooted over to one side of the table opposite Shinji, showing the men the back of their heads and nothing else.

The martini arrived with an order of rice balls and a pitcher of water, which the old woman had forced them to buy and promise to finish before leaving.

"She's just worried about her license," Kodama explained as she pointedly moved the water and rice to one side. "Yesterday I had to come up here and buy the drinks by myself, since I'm the only one of-age and Ginger here" she indicated Asuka "didn't feel like flashing her card. Bat made me buy six bottles of water. As if anyone with any sense is going to do nothing but drink and lay out in the sun all day."

As Kodama spoke, Shinji was staring into the chilled soup bowl that contained the martini. At the bottom were six ovoid objects, each slightly bigger than a grape and the color of boiled egg yolk. He fished one out with the single pair of cheap plastic chopsticks that had come with their setting.

"Olive," Hikari supplied. "They grow them up in Aomori. It's a fruit, originally from the Mediterranean I think."

Shinji had never seen one before. There was a small tab of red in the pit on one end.

He smelled the olive. Smelled the martini. Smelled pine needles and cheap perfume. Bit into it. Should have had some of the martini alone first. The rubbery, layered texture seemed to be soaked in liquid nitrogen. He almost spit it out. Collected himself. Chewed. Tasted the subtle differences in flavor, got a good idea of what was olive and what was martini. Gave his mouth an interesting aftertaste. The cold turned warm as it passed down Shinji's throat, settled in his stomach.

This is probably what she wants, Shinji thought as he popped the rest of the olive into his mouth, glancing at Asuka.

She wanted this to happen.

He could not guess why.

The actual martini was difficult to down. Shinji could appreciate the smooth and smoky taste of warm sake, but this was very... foreign. Western. No subtlety, just overwhelming, blunt function. Even the cup was odd, a tall, clear cylinder as opposed to the traditional shallow ceramic dish.

Kodama noticed him examining his glass. "Shot glass," she said. "Well, more like a sipping glass. In the States, you'd drink Tequila out of it."

Shinji watched her take up two of the sipping glasses, filling one with water and the other with martini. Took a moment to notice Hikari carefully filling her glass halfway, and Asuka dunking her glass and hand into the bowl, taking it away dripping.

He finished a shot, then waited for Kodama and Asuka to catch up. Ate part of a rice ball. Hikari sipped from her glass sparingly. The men in the corner talked quietly to one another. The television droned. The surf crashed.

"What do you think?" Kodama asked.

"Strong," Shinji managed. "Different," he elaborated. "I don't really like it."

"Eh, you stop tasting it after two shots," the young woman smiled, took another sip.

"Why would I... want two shots?" was he already getting drunk? That shouldn't be possible. Just how potent was this supposed to be? He ate the rest of his rice ball and dipped his now-empty shotglass into the pitcher of water. Gulped it down.

"Because it isn't polite to not match a woman, glass for glass," Asuka said absently, looking out at the sea and draining her own.

She's getting impatient, Shinji thought. Trying to speed something up.

"That's right!" Kodama declared, dipping her glass into the bowl. "There are rules, Ikari. We can't have you taking advantage of us because you're the only one still sober!"

"You won't have to worry about that," Hikari muttered, and took another dainty sip from her glass. "Just don't expect me to hold your hair this time."

Shinji drank some more water, then dipped again into the martini. This wasn't his game. He wasn't sure he should be playing, but was going to anyway.

Asuka filled up her shot, rested her chin on one hand, her gaze fixed again toward the sea. Shinji followed her gaze, wondered if she was looking at the line where water became sky, or the ruins a few hundred feet offshore. Those were little more than concrete husks and exposed I-beams.

He sipped. Ate. Indicated that the bartender should bring more rice.

Two shots.

Three.

Shinji kept quiet. The burn in his stomach had spread up to his chest, and now he was sweating. He was afraid to speak, afraid to get up. Every slight motion seemed to make it harder to think clearly.

Kodama and Hikari were talking about their little sister, Nozomi. About how she hated New Yokohama and wanted to spend Summer break at their old property in Tokyo 3. The two sisters asked Shinji and Asuka if they thought this would be safe.

Shinji ate an olive. Asuka said: Sure, as long as she gets to a shelter, she'll be fine.

Not true, he thought. Didn't say it. Why?

Right. Kodama had mentioned about coming down as well. Staying in Tokyo 3 with her little sister. That was why he had stayed quiet. Horrible.

Not a date thing, Shinji thought to himself as he ate another rice ball. Not a date thing.

He'd tell Kodama later. Tell her to keep her little sister away from Tokyo 3. Right now though...

Right now he could enjoy the taste of olive, and the faint sketch in his head of what it would be like to have Kodama live in Tokyo 3 for a while.

Maybe see her every once and a while? No. Why bother lying? He was thinking about dating. About meeting in the evening at ramen shops, movie theaters. All the other stuff his classmates went on about. Drama.

His reasoning was giving way to stupid lust. This young woman he had known for no more than three days, sitting across from him wearing practically nothing... her hair and voice and the easy way she moved were all getting at him.

There was a fourth shot of martini in front of him. It was half-empty. Shinji had no idea how it had got there.

I'm not thinking clearly, he realized, and then wondered if he had just uttered the thought aloud. It was getting hard to differentiate between the noise outside and the noise in his head.

Not right. This shouldn't be enough to get him drunk. He could go to four cups of sake without feeling anything but warmth in his stomach. But this... this wasn't sake.

He got up, bumped his knees on the table, knocking over Asuka's glass. The red head hissed. Kodama laughed. Hikari... he didn't see her, was too busy walking away, concentrating on moving over the sand and not stumbling. He went around the bar and into the restroom stall at the back. The orange light and the cool cement floor on his bare feet sharpened his mind.

What was Asuka playing at?

The water from the sink was ice-cold. He cupped his hands beneath the faucet and drank deeply, then splashed his face.

This has to be it, right? Get me here, get me to drink. She wants me drunk.

He wiped his face dry with toilet paper. Urinated. Leaned against the cinder block wall - the cold there helping to sober him up even more.

Why should I even be trying to reason this out? She isn't... she's just mean. I'm poison to her.

Shinji did not want to be drunk. He could feel Hikari's respect for him diminishing every time he filled up the glass, and Kodama... he didn't want to look foolish in front of her. Even if this wasn't a date thing.

"Friends," he muttered. "Thish is what _friends_ do."

* * *

Shinji spent the next ten minutes carefully appearing to drink three more shots. He ate two more olives and finished off the tray of rice balls. When the bowl of martini was finally drained Hikari made them all finish the pitcher of water. Then the girls staggered around the bar to the restrooms while Shinji went to the bar to settle the bill. The old woman glared at him.

"I saw you pouring my gin onto the sand," she said as she examined his ID card, then turned and swiped it through a reader. "You aren't thinking of doing something bad, are you?"

Shinji shook his head. "I..." he began. Stopped.

"I think she wanted me drunk," he finally said as the woman handed the card back. "I think it was supposhed to be a joke."

"Not my business, I expect," the woman said, but beckoned Shinji closer. "Any girl puts herself in that position, maybe she wants something to happen, hmm? But," she looked over to the two tattooed thugs who were, at the moment, watching the bar television. "Maybe you should worry about it staying just your business. Maybe you should have the girl that did not drink drive you all home now."

Shinji looked at the card for a long moment, then thanked the old woman. Rounded the bar. Stood outside the woman's restroom. Guarding it. Feeling foolish.

Asuka was the first to emerge.

"We should leave," Shinji said at once, the alcohol making him speak fast and easy, even to her, "The bartender things... _thinks_ those two guys at the bar are going to be trouble."

The red head laughed, not looking at him, and reached into her handbag. The strange configuration of black, dull metal took Shinji a moment to identify. A pistol. His knees went weak.

"You..." he said as she clicked the safety twice, wrapped her finger around the trigger guard.

Only police and the military were allowed to have guns. Shinji could not believe the Major would allow Asuka to have one.

He wondered if it was loaded. He wondered if she slept with that thing in her room. He wondered exactly how mad she was at him.

Kodama exited the restroom, and Asuka discretely returned the pistol to her bag. Shinji looked out across the sand, to the parking lot. There were several unmarked cars, any of which might contain Section 2. Why was no one doing anything about this?

"Could do with a nap," Kodama said, moving across the sand with dampened grace. "'summing _Mister_ Ikari here won't be doing anything to me while I sleep?"

Asuka made brief eye contact with Shinji, her face slack. Then she turned to Kodama. "He wouldn't even know what to do with you."

Kodama laughed.

* * *

It was the sun, Shinji decided. He was back under the beach umbrella, duffel bag beneath his head, looking into the sky. The sun was just too much. It was making him drowsy, sapping his energy. The Horaki sisters were already asleep, and Asuka... he looked over at her.

She was on her side, facing him, her attention apparently on the book in her hands. _Kafka on the Beach, _it was called. Her eyes were lidded, as though she were nodding off. Shinji watched her reading, saw her head bob as she began to doze.

What was she thinking, bringing a gun here? he thought. I should be running away, shouldn't I? She...

...she might shoot me. She really might try to kill me. Nothing she says or does seems to make the slightest bit of sense, so why not?

As he thought this, Asuka let the book slip from her hands, and absently reached into the bag by her side.

Shinji's eyes widened.

But that was just how Asuka finally fell asleep, one hand in her day bag.

He padded quietly from the three, looking up and down the beach and not seeing anyone. The sun was high in the sky, the heat intense. Perhaps the Yakuza-types had left. He supposed it did not really matter. Asuka had a gun and, well, Section 2 was always watching.

He wandered to the shoreline, enjoying the feel of wet sand between his toes, of the surf washing over his legs.

And again, that feeling of familiarity. Like he had been to a beach before.

"A swim, then?" came a voice behind him.

Kodama had approached quietly, was smiling.

"I thought you were..." he began. She had been asleep, right?

"Nope."

"Why aren't you...?" Wait.

At the bar she had kept two glasses in front of her the whole time. One with water, the other with martini. She had finished seven glasses altogether. But seven glasses of _what_?

"You didn't have any of it, did you?" he said flatly.

Two quick steps and her face was an inch from his own. She exhaled. He could smell, faintly, the martini on her breath.

"I had a little," she corrected, pulling back. "Maybe two shots worth."

Her uncertain movements and seemingly drunken comments... those had been fake. Shinji took a step back. How could he ever trust a person like this? An _actress_.

"No," Horaki saw something of what was going on his mind, took a step forward. "No, no, I wasn't trying to trick you. And I saw what you did there halfway through. You'd take the glass just below the table and spill some of it, then pretend to drink."

It wasn't the same thing. Shinji was still feeling the alcohol, still feeling numb. He had pulled himself back from the edge - Kodama had never even approached it.

She circled him now, arms crossed.

"I'm sorry, but I was seeing what you would do there," she said, pausing as a wave crashed and washed over their feet. "I saw that moment when you realized what was happening to you, and I decided right then..."  
Kodama was getting subtly closer as she circled.

"That I was going to make this very easy for you. If" she raised one hand, "you got yourself drunk, and fell asleep soon thereafter, I would simply lay on my towel and work on my tan. But," she raised the other hand, "if you happened to be awake, and obviously capable of doing so, I would make a little bet with you."

"A bet," Shinji repeated.

"You _can_ swim, right?" Kodama had stopped pacing around, was drawing herself even with him and the shoreline.

"Yes..."

Kodama gestured to the sea. "Can you see the metal pylons out there?"

Shinji looked, and at first saw only bobbing waves.

"There, just before the buildings, that line of reflection?"

And he could see them. In the shadows cast by the ruins, metal platforms rose a foot or so out of the water. Out of the shade, he could infer where they were, though it was mostly a mash-up of cresting waves gleaming in the sun.

"Yes," he finally replied. "Yeah, I can see them."

"Okay. Okay." Kodama was bouncing on the balls of her feet. Seemed... nervous? "Okay. How are you feeling? If I, say, were to ask you to swim out as far as those pylons, do you think you could make it?"

"Sure."

"Okay," she repeated again. "By the way, what you said about Asuka? Writing your name so I would see it? Tricking me? I think I believe that now.

"And I want you to know that, in the car? When I said I was just being polite? I did not mean to you." Kodama backed away from the shoreline, sat down on dry sand. "I meant to her. Asuka. I was being polite to her. You didn't get that, did you?"

Shinji did not reply. He was trying to process what this meant.

"Well. Okay. How about this. You and me, we're going to start from here, and we're going to swim as hard as we can to those pylons, alright? And the first one there, the first one to pull themselves up onto one? Wins."

Tomorrow, this will mean nothing, Shinji reminded himself desperately. She's an actress. All of this could be a big setup. A big joke. He looked out to the pillars, and wondered what might await him out there. Nothing of great importance. But it might be fun. Even if he got there and crawled, gasping, onto a pillar, only to turn and find Kodama back on the beach laughing at him... it might still be fun. He had never swam in the ocean before.

"I could do that," he allowed. "And if you win... what? I have to buy you one of those fizzy drinks you were talking about this morning?" Hopefully something a little less potent than a martini.

"Nope," Kodama responded, rising to her feet. "After the race, that's when you'll know."

She reached out and touched him, hand closing around his shoulder and pointing to the pillars.

"So go."

Kodama was up to her knees in the surf before Shinji had even begun to move. A half-formed question died on his lips, and he quickly joined her moving against the sucking, surf. At about a hundred meters the water got deeper, and he was able to dive forward and and begin to actually swim.

It was nothing like swimming in a pool. The water was always in motion. He was rebuffed several times by cresting waves before learning to dive beneath them. For a while all he could hear was his own splashing and the muted sounds of his motion when he submerged. His reasons for swimming were forgotten as the mechanics of it took over, fueled by old and easy fears of the water.

It was lucky that Shinji didn't hit the pillar head on. When something solid brushed against his hip, he closed on it without thinking, first pulling himself against, and then on to, one of numerous columns rising just out of the water. Panting heavily, he scanned the area for signs of Horaki.

She was on a pillar maybe a hundred feet away, very close to a ruined building. In the shadow of the broken thing. She was reclining, resting, and waved after a moment. Then she cupped her hands and yelled: "Stay right there, I'll come to you," and slipped back into the water.

He had lost, surely. Shinji could swim now, but still not very well. The breast-stroke wasn't very effective when he was totally submerged, and he didn't have the stamina for long distances. It _had_ been interesting though. At least he had been right about something today.

His opponent pulled herself onto the pillar next to his, flopping onto her side.

"I won, Ikari," she panted. "Didn't... didn't think it would... be this far out but... I won."

"Congratulations," he said.

"Just give me... a second."

"You know what... these are for?" she continued, with a limp gesture to the pillar she was on.

"Not... something to keep boats away from land?" Shinji honestly had no idea. He had thought, on the shore, that they were ruins. Now on the hot metal, he had no idea.

"Things have power plants inside them," Horaki was beginning to get her breath back. "Emit a low-level current. Keeps the sharks that live in the ruins away from the... beach."

Shinji pulled his legs out of the water. Cast a weary glance into the black depths beneath the ruined buildings that suddenly seemed too close.

"Ah. Okay, yeah. I think I'm good now." She slid off her pillar, moved to his.

"I won."

"Yes Miss Horaki, you won."

"Kodama," she corrected. "_That _you can call my sister."

"...okay."

She pulled herself up and stretched out next to him, water beading on bare flesh. And it occurred to Shinji that what she was doing right now could not be misconstrued. He didn't have the exact word for it, but...

That morning, he had arranged Ayanami's meal very carefully in the lacquered red lunch box he normally took to school. Layering the sushi around the nagiri, crossing the teak chopsticks over that. He knew the First Child would probably not notice that additional three minutes of effort, but he had done it anyway.

_Presenting_. That was the word he was looking for. And as soon as he grasped that word, Kodama did as she had promised on the shore, pushing him back and down.

She made things very easy for him.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**(Two of Three) – ((My lips don't kiss the way they used to. My eyes don't recognize you no more. – Brandon Flowers))

* * *

Shinji's foot and elbow dug into the small lip of metal that ringed the pillar. It was all there was to brace against, and the slight pain did not bother him in the slightest. His other arm was looped under Kodama's knee, keeping it up and against her side.

It had been easy to just let go, to just accept what was offered and not worry about what it might entail. After half a year devoid of the slightest physical contact, the mere feeling of Kodama's skin against his own was a pleasure. The small sounds she was making, her quick instructions or words of encouragement... she was all there. She was _involved_.

The ocean around them, salt-spray filling Shinji's mouth, the sound of gulls and current filling his ears. Close but... far closer was Kodama. And then...

...the world changed. Fell away from them. Quite suddenly Shinji was high in the air, looking down at an expanse of flat white. Felt the breeze around him slow as he reached the apex of ascent.

And began to fall.

He didn't remember the impact. One instant the wind tearing at his body, blinding him. The next he standing on a white plain before a small, broken thing that seemed horribly familiar.

His back hurt, and one arm was numb, chilled, turning blue. Every bit of strength was spent staying upright... and when he saw what the thing at his feet truly was; when he saw the girl he barely knew, yet somehow knew so well twisted and bloodied, he fell to his knees.

Kodama, he mouthed. No. "Nuh-no."

Shinji wanted to touch her, but was afraid, and leaning forward caused the world to go gray. This pain wasn't psychosomatic, it endured cold and burning and beyond his ability to cope. He began to cry, the pain and a sudden sense of loss easily overcoming him. Looking at the girl at his feet, it was like Ayanami was dead. Like Misato and Asuka and everyone he had ever set eyes upon was dead and gone in a terrible way. For all Shinji knew, that was the case. Feeling the white against his knees, painfully moving his head to survey the barren, lifeless landscape around him, it was not hard to imagine that it went on forever. It was not hard to imagine that he was completely alone.

Kodama Horaki. Long brown hair, often tied back. Pale skin. Nipples the color of coffee with a little cream. Liked to laugh. Now at his feet pale, naked, unmoving.

The sorrow was a sour blessing. It numbed the physical pain - did not diminish it, but made it tolerable. Unimportant.

Shinji leaned forward, hearing in his back a sound like plastic stretching, and shook Kodama with his good hand. The body was cold.

The body was cold, but as he yanked at the shoulder, causing it to roll out flat on the ground, an arm shifted. A finger twitched. It..._she_ groaned. Kodama opened her eyes, squinted against the harsh light, and slowly got to her feet.

Somehow still alive, she turned in place, dazedly taking in the strange new world. Bare but for the bikini bottoms wadded around one ankle, the white surrounding her contrasting with her slightly darker skin, Shinji could see that she was virtually unhurt. The blood crusted on her face and side did not seem to be her own. So who had lost... all that... blood...

He looked down at his hands. They were _quite_ pale.

"Ikari," she murmured, her voice distant. "Wha...?" She dropped down to her knees, stared off into the distance.

"I was..." she began, stopped. "Where..." stopped again.

"Snow," she finally managed, scooping up a handful of the thin loose powder on the ground and then quickly discarding it. "It's warm." She blinked. "What happened?"

"Kodama," Shinji wasn't sure if he had said the name aloud or not. Things were getting _faint_. Like he was drunk again. But he must have managed it - as she was pulling her bikini bottom back on, she smiled.

"Yes._ Shinji._ Oh." She was looking at his arm. "Oh, that isn't right."

She closed the space between them hesitantly, feeling her way over the surface, as though she expected it to not hold her weight. Inspecting him up and down with an analytical eye, Kodama rounded him, lightly touching his bad shoulder... then squeezing it roughly. He heard a sudden intake of breath. She had obviously found what was wrong with his back.

"...bad?" Shinji rasped. The pressure on his shoulder was causing the entire arm to tingle.

"How could this..." the young woman stuttered.

Silence.

"No, it isn't that bad," Kodama said in a detached voice. "You've got a pretty long cut back here, but it isn't deep. You have a latitudinal la-laceration we..." another pause, "we need to get you medical attention. You've lost a lot of blood. Oh, and Shinji?" she rested her head on his good shoulder for a moment, then kissed him on the cheek. "I'm really sorry about this."

An unasked question died on Shinji's lips as Kodama grabbed his numb arm in one hand, bad shoulder in the other and then _did something_. Something popped and his arm...

She was stronger than he would have guessed, easily holding him up as he thrashed.

"I've just repositioned your humerus and scapula," she recited in monotone. "It was dislocated and restricting the flow of blood to your arm."

After the pain of the initial movement the sensation of pins and needles in his arm was still intense, but he could walk. Kodama massaged his bad shoulder, and nudged him forward.

"The ruins that were near the pylon are behind us," she whispered in a soothing tone he could just barely hear. "We are close to the beach, we should get there quickly."

I'm the pilot of Unit One, Shinji thought in a grimacing daze. I can barely grasp this. How could she possibly handle it so well?

And then he had a dangerous thought: She really is amazing.

The ocean that had somehow froze beneath Shinji and Kodama had a subtle grade. The further they walked, the more pronounced an incline became, and the consistency of the 'ice' grew thinner, breaking under their feet. This forced slow, careful progress - the edges of the crust were sharp and jagged, and Kodama managed to cut herself once or twice before they got the hang of stepping far apart and then straight down. A rim of broken gray appeared on the horizon where before just white met sky. The ruins of Old Tokyo, a tease of normalcy from what seemed a long way off.

She kept a detached commentary going, which at the very least gave Shinji something to concentrate on. His body seemed to be getting heavier, his thoughts disjointed. When they at last arrived at the beach, the voice was the only thing he was following, lost as he was in a sequence of images and sensation that didn't seem to have anything to do with him.

Then the voice stopped, and the tattered remains of his nightshirt were ripped off.

* * *

_a miracle you survived oh I was so worried _

_so what happened _

_we don't know an angel attack obviously_

Someone was rolling him onto his stomach. He didn't remember hitting the ground.

_do something you have to do something how could how could how_

He was being lifted up by his arms. One burned. He tried to tug it away.

_no he is hurt there lift him b-by his shoulder and feet _

_will this car even work_

He moaned, and when the lifting hands went away, he tried to get up. His face jerked to one side. He heard a strange, mechanical moan.

_shit it got the battery _

_how many do you have __I don't care just do it wunderkind's boyfriend tuned up her car broke the seal on the shielding_

His face jerked again. Something hurt.

_two of them now _

_would you fucking move _

_we aren't leaving without_

Leave. Please, take me away. I didn't feel right. I needed help. Why aren't-

_Asuka please just leave we can walk he needs _

_you are coming with us don't argue _

_he needs blood and antibiotics or he will die Sohryu he needs these things now _

_how would you know_

"I was pre-med, remember?" Kodama responded in a scalding tone as she struck Shinji across the face again.

"Ow."

"Good," she said, shifting her expression from Asuka to him. "You can't go to sleep." Back to Asuka, "we need medical evacuation." The redhead had already left Shinji's view.

"OkaaahhhhaaAH!" his delayed response to Kodama was cut off as she touched the lip of the wound on his back. It did a marvelous job of keeping him awake, but he really wished she would... his eyes focused on her.

She was wearing his nightshirt! It was looped around her chest and neck, replacing her lost bikini top.

He made a grab for it without really thinking.

"Shinji!" an incredulous voice. Hikari.

"Nothing, nothing," Kodama was saying as she guided Shinji's hand away from her chest. "He's delirious."

"But he..."

But I. Shinji giggled.

That wasn't a good sound, was it. That wasn't a sound he should be making.

Kodama brushed his wound again. He gritted his teeth.

"Medical evac isn't possible. Their phones are," Asuka rounded the... they were by Kodama's car. Pretty shade of gray. Looked blue with that towering white mountain in the distance, where the ocean had been. "Oh, I see Third is back with us - the phones are all dead. None of the Section Two guys have equipment shielded against this type of thing, either. We're just lucky that car batteries are manufactured at Faraday-spec."

"Well, don't tell us about this, just get the car moving," Kodama said, glancing at Shinji.

"I still think you should just..." Hikari began, and was quickly interrupted.

"No, I have to get you and your sister..."

"Just go!" the eldest Horaki shouted. "There's

_no time _

_why did you do that _

_she doesn't understand he's going to die if we oh dammit_

His back lit up again.

"Stay awake!"

"I don't understand why she won't let the agents take him," Hikari was saying, somewhere behind him, as yet unseen.

"She isn't thinking clearly, I don't think any of us are."

No, no. Not that. That isn't the reason. No, no, Asuka hates me.

"What did he just say?"

Stalling. I don't know. I don't know. Why not just shoot me?

"Something about soothing, I think," Kodama replied. "Like I said, he's delirious."

The gray-blue car made a roaring sound. Hikari cheered. Kodama stroked his nerve again. The world spun around as he was pushed, face-down, through an open door and into the back seat. Kodama wedged herself in to the foot-well beside him. The car began to move.

"There's a NERV ingress point not too far from here," Asuka said from the front. "We can treat Third there."

"Stop calling him that!" Hikari, also from the front. "I just... when he's like this... say his name!"

"He's the designated Third Child. And anyway, it's a syllable shorter. Take a left here," came the matter-of-fact reply.

Gone. She really was gone.

Red hair on Kodama's shoulder. A noise of disgust. "Don't we have anything here that can cover that up?"

"No." Kodama's terse reply.

"I have to make sure they're following us and"

"Use the side mirrors then, Asuka!" Hikari's panicked voice cut in before Kodama could respond.

"Okay, take another right."

"But the sign says..."

"Doesn't matter, take another right."

Kodama touched his back again. His stolen nightshirt must have slipped as she crawled into the car - one breast hung free. She smiled when she saw him notice. Their secret.

"I don't see anything," Hikari said.

"Inside the building," came Asuka's reply. A door opened.

"What the fuck, Sohryu!" Kodama's breast was back in his shirt. She opened the door at Shinji's head and got out. "How could we possibly"

There was a sharp sound. In the front seat, Hikari gasped.

"Would you shut the fuck up?" Asuka yelled. "We can't go anywhere else! The main roads are going to be impassable. There's a trauma bag in there, okay? Everything but a surgery suite!"

"That isn't good enough! He needs a doctor!"

"Well," Asuka replied in a cool tone, "good thing you were pre-med, huh?"

Kodama's leg appeared in front of him. She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him out until he could grasp the car door and - just barely - stand. There was a red mark on her face. Asuka had... slapped her?

"Why do you even care?" the redhead continued as they walked out across a vast bright space. "You don't have to worry, we have eleven other pilots."

He felt Kodama stiffen, but she didn't otherwise respond, only guided him across yet another expanse of white. A... what? Parking lot? He wasn't wearing anything on his feet, and the cracked and pebbled pavement was hot. She guided into shadow, where the blinding light of day receded and their destination was made visible. It seemed to have been a hotel at some point in the distant past. Nothing left but peeling facade and boarded-up windows. They were... inside Old Tokyo?

Asuka was talking ahead of them. The... the Yakuza wannabes! The men from the bar! They were next to her! He jerked in Kodama's grasp. They...!

One opened a concealed panel at the front entrance of the ruin. Typed something in.

Section Two.

Beyond the doors of the apparent hotel was a large chamber of poured concrete, lit in a low flickering artificial light. Support columns sprouted at intervals, branching off overhead into naked superstructure. If the building had even existed before Second Impact, it had been gutted.

"Welcome to NERV ingress point ZG0... well, it doesn't matter," Asuka said by way of introduction as they crossed the empty space to the ingress point's only remarkable feature: a twin elevator shaft that extended into the darkness overhead, toward an unseen ceiling.

They paused before the two pair of elevator doors while the faux-Yakuza removed the simple up-and-down interface and typed something into another concealed keypad. A sharp sound came from behind the left set of doors. The two men pulled them apart, revealing a room lit in the same uncertain light as the outer chamber.

"I'll see if I can do something about the power," Asuka said, entering the room and vanishing through a narrow hallway. Kodama guided Shinji into the so-called ingress point. One of the Section Two agents produced a folding stool from a utility closet, and Shinji was placed atop it. Hikari was made responsible for holding him upright while Kodama went through several drawers marked with a red cross.

"Let us know if you need anything," the man that had produced the stool said to Kodama, before moving to join his fellow agent in the outer chamber.

"How about fifty cc of blood?" the young woman responded bitterly. This gave the agent pause.

"Will you be able to treat him here? If not..."

"I can do something," Kodama interrupted, beginning to remove select aluminum packets from the various drawers. "Unless one of you has post-nursing emergency surgical expertise - then you should be the one doing this."

The man nodded to the young pre-med's back, and left.

"Hikari," she said, drawing out two small metal bowls and tossing one to her sister, "fill this up." Leaving Shinji unsupported for a moment, Hikari moved to run a faucet somewhere to his left. He tried to follow her motion, but didn't have the strength to even

"God da-" he was on the floor again.

"I'm sorry!" a voice shrieked. "I'm sorry!"

Strong hands on his shoulders, lifting him upright. The smell of coconut suntan lotion. The person holding him upright briefly crossed into his field of vision. The agent that had procured the stool. The man's features were Caucasian, clean-shaven. Hard gray eyes looked into his own, searching for something.

"I would give him that shot now, Miss," the man said, circling Shinji and supporting him from behind.

"Not a good idea," Kodama said as she emptied a few pills from each of the chosen packets into her metal bowl. She then handed this to Hikari, who seemed reluctant to look directly at her sister. The agent behind him took the bowl from Hikari and removed a single pill from one bowl, fed it to Shinji. Hikari brought the other bowl to his lips, to drink.

"Adrenaline jet now and I don't think he'll let us dress his back. Just touch the" she fished out a box of latex gloves, tossed them to the man "just touch his back every time he closes his eyes."

The agent gave Shinji a pill, and another. Touched his back much harder than Kodama had, causing Shinji to tear up.

"Sorry kid," the agent said, feeding Shinji another pill.

This process continued for some time. As Hikari and the agent worked, Kodama prepared something, stacking plastic packets and cannisters on the narrow counter. She often cursed, and ignored her sister's tentative questions. At some point the flickering overhead lights stabilized, and Asuka emerged from the narrow hallway to announce that three Eva had been launched to combat the Angel that had caused the current situation. Her words were greeted with blank stares or annoyance and she retreated, muttering in German.

"Done," the agent said, showing the empty bowl to Shinji, then Kodama.

"Good," Kodama replied. "We need to... ah, step out for the dressing."

The Horaki sisters arranged several blankets on the hard concrete floor just outside the ingress point and had the agent lower Shinji on to them. Kodama stuffed a pillow between his head and the floor. Then she touched his back. "Don't go to sleep."

She and Hikari moved in and out of the ingress point, depositing items on the ground next to him, including a small stack of sealed plastic packets and what appeared to be... well, something between a hand-held drill and a pistol. They spoke in hushed tones while they worked, Kodama's voice even, Hikari's strained. The younger Horaki's hands were shaking badly by the time she placed a larger cylinder on the ground next to Shinji, which was connected to a long clear hose looped around one of its handles and ended in a hooked nozzle. Kodama came up behind her, pulling on latex gloves that... they seemed to go up to her elbows. She handed a pair to Hikari and then sent her back into the inner chamber for something.

"Shinji," Kodama was standing close. He couldn't see her face, just sandal-clad feet. Bright green. "You've lost a lot of skin and muscle tissue on your back. I have to dress it, but we don't have a the equipment to monitor your... we c-can't..." Her toes curled. "We can't put you under. We need you to stay awake, to monitor your... it will be over quickly, I promise."

Put him under. Muscle tissue. Shinji examined the words, trying to make sense of them. Something... this seemed like it might be very bad, but he wasn't sure. Couldn't seem to focus on implication.

Hikari returned, and Kodama asked both agents to come hold Shinji down. Then the elder Horaki sat on his butt, and in a daze of apprehension and shock he realized that she had put on actual pants at some point, the cloth rubbing against his sides. Made him feel silly, still wearing only his swim suit.

Overhead was a rattling sound, Kodama shaking up the ball bearing in one of those canisters. Then a hiss, and his entire body convulsed. The men kept him pinned to the ground. He screamed, but the pain continued. Refused to stop!

"I need you here, Hikari," evil was saying above. "There, keep it on. Like that." There was a new pressure now, that ran around the edges of his wound. He screamed again. The cylinder at his side... the hose connected to it had been pulled away, and the portion still visible had turned red. Bright red.

"It isn't blood!" a voice admonished. "I need you here. It isn't blood!"

The sound of someone being sick.

"Fine, you done? All done? Get back here and keep the rim open!"

"'dama I'm sorry I just never"

"It's okay, it's okay, just get back here."

Everything was getting dim. Even with the pain, the lights overhead seemed less bright. The voices above him grew muffled, unimportant.

_oh shit_

Something jabbed into his bicep. A pinch.

_okay we have to hurry_

And the light came back. The pain came back. Again he screamed.

When the hiss of the canister spray fell silent his torture continued. The fluid was still soaking into his back, a deep burn. He could hear it fizzle and pop.

People moved overhead, spoke. The weight holding him down did not waver. The large pistol-thing that had been placed by his side at the start had been moved. A cylinder labeled "Epinephrine" protruded from just beneath the muzzle. It lay among several spent cannisters, their nozzles now stained with a bright, pastel red. All this was brushed aside as hands reached for the remaining medical materials. One of the many plastic packets was unsealed, and sheets of glossy black material were removed.

"We're almost done, Shin," whispered the horrible voice overhead.

No, you _are_ done. I'm fine now! he tried to say. Please just

"Set it like this, see?" Pain returned. Multiplied. What they were putting on his back, it burned bright! It was cooking into his flesh! The weight keeping him down seemed to waver. A man grunted.

"We need to go," said a new voice. "There's been an accident."

"Not now, Sohryu!" the wicked voice exclaimed.

"Huh," was the only reply. A new pair of sandaled feet wandered into his field of vision. A person knelt, red hair spilling across bent legs.

"The Angel has taken control of five Evangelions, three deployed inside the city and the two that were on standby. Central Dogma is losing power. I've been directed to escort you to Terminal Dogma."

Asuka sat now, cross legged, chin resting on one hand. She looked bored.

He screamed again, bucked against whatever was holding him down.

"Almost there," said a lie.

End it! he wanted to scream, but another hoarse scream was all that came out. End it end it end it end it!

"Okay," the voice finally said. "Done." The weight on his lower body departed, as did the weight on his shoulders. He sprang to his feet. Hands seized him again. A girl, the horrible person he knew had been torturing him, leaned in and placed a square of something on his neck.

The effect was immediate. The pain in his back deadened. His entire body quickly became comfortably numb.

"Topical morphine applicator," a voice said.

More words were spoken. They did not matter, did not apply to him. He drifted free of his bonds and explored the landscape around him, the colorless and bright and angled place. It was like a drawn out orgasm, a state of pleasant inner chaos. Sounds around him that meant nothing, a place he never had to leave. No pain at all.

Then something broke through the barrier, a sound or motion that rattled his bones, made the lights seem to flicker.

Oh, the lights _were_ flickering. He noted this from his sudden position on the floor, staring up at the darkened ceiling, which might as well have been a night sky. Someone was standing over him, a vaguely familiar object in their hand.

They said something, grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet. Something hurt.

Right, red hair so the person was... Asuka? She pulled him forward, dragging him to the... the white place with the folding stool. Into a narrow hallway. Into a room cramped with computer equipment. The door shut behind him. Asuka showed him the morphine applicator, ripped off his neck and crumpled in her hand. Said something, then brought the back of her hand across his face. It stung.

"Feeling it now?" the girl asked again, slapping him again.

"Ahh..." he groaned as he backed away from Asuka, nearly bumping into the wall before catching himself. His back, he couldn't let it touch anything. There was little pain at the moment, but the wound was raw, the weight of the dressing restricting his movement. And he was tired, so tired.

"Good," the Junior Tactical Officer seated herself behind the console and typed in a rapid command. Several images jumped on-screen, one appeared to be right outside the hotel facade, where Kodama was standing before closed doors. The elder Horaki appeared livid. The other image was of a cityscape, probably taken from the top of the building. There was a huge red thing rising up in the distance. A tubular shape, tapered at the top. It seemed to vibrate, dimensions wildly expanding and contracting.

Asuka hit a button, "Agents Green and Tayahatsu, please allow the Horaki children access to a northward utility road. You may escort them as far as you are inclined." On-screen, Kodama was searching for the camera, and when she found it, approached and said something very slowly, holding up another morphine applicator she must have intended to give to Shinji. This failed to illicit any response, so she turned and spoke to the agents, now on-screen as well. When this proved fruitless as well, she faced the camera and carefully extended her middle finger. Asuka shut off that video feed.

Three more towering red things had emerged in the remaining video feed, whipping and seeming to explore each other, like great lolling tongues.

"Interesting, huh?" the former pilot said, typing another command into the console. The room shuddered, and began to _move_. "There's an Angel positioned over the city too."

Back in the outer chamber he had been knocked on the floor by something. The Angel must have done something that shook the building. When everyone else had gone out to see what had caused it... Asuka had locked them out.

"We have to lesh them in," Shinji said, his tongue still numb from the drug. "We can take them wish us."

The red head seemed to consider this, then said "good idea, Shinji!"

She pressed a button and the door behind him opened. He turned and faced a long, unfamiliar corridor.

"Oh, right. We're in an elevator," the girl chuckled, pushing him out of the doorway and ahead of her. Shinji turned and tried to move past her, back into the room. She barred his path and pushed back, forcing him further down the hallway.

"Come on," she said idly, "none of that. They will have gone already. The Geo-Front is under attack. Turn and walk."

Shinji tried to move past Asuka again. She smacked him across the face, grabbed his arm, and began dragging him down the hall.

"Listen up Ikari," she said in an even voice. "The only way you will ever do _anyone_ any good is if you get to Eva."

She let him go. He glared at her, the reluctantly turned and led the way.

Asuka giggled.

"Yellow bones," she said, again pushing Shinji forward roughly. "Your shoulder blade is yellow, did they tell you that? The bone is sick yellow."

She rested a hand lightly on his upper back, on the bandage. "I wonder if they have a formal designation for the Angel yet - 'Shylock' seems a pretty apt name for it."

Shinji shook his head, not recognizing the foreign word.

"Move faster, please," the hand on Shinji's back closed into a fist, nails scraping across the bandage. He moved faster.

I should just try to keep her happy, he thought. Just agree with whatever she says.

He wondered if she still had that pistol. Probably.

"Even if you weren't banged up like this, you'd probably be going slow, wouldn't you? A bit sore and stiff?" Asuka drew level with him, peering, then smiling. "She fucked you good, didn't she?"

He had absolutely nothing to say to that.

"I'm assuming she let you inside her, is that right?" Asuka waited for a response. "Hikari is always complaining about Kodama sharing stories of her sex life. Apparently she likes sucking her boyfriends off, but I figured she'd be nice..." Asuka walked ahead of him now, turning and walking backwards, eying him with a soft, expectant look.

"Was I wrong?"

Shinji kept walking forward, he looked through Asuka, and did not say a thing.

"Hey," her expression darkened. "It wasn't like you deserved that, you know. I was trying to do you a favor."

"No wait," she turned away, a hand at her chin, "or was I doing _me_ a favor?"

She drew level with him again. "Shinji, help me out here, I understand you might be uncomfortable imagining yourself as an attractive young woman - though God knows you're mere inches from being a very plain one - but if a guy raped you, got you pregnant? Would hooking him up with a slut be a favor to him, or to you?"

Rape? He flinched at the word. Pregnant? What was she talking about?

"I mean, I guess you could be thanking the guy for finally popping your cherry, even if you had to pay for the abortion yourself. Or maybe you just want him to end up insane with whatever flesh-eating disease this slut you hooked him up with has?"

"We ushed a condom," he said in a mock dismissive tone. This was... this was wrong. This had to be a lie.

Asuka laughed again, patting him on his good shoulder. "What would be the point in having sex with you without one? Couldn't having you enjoy yourself too much..." she waited half a beat "..._Shin_."

"I put holes in the condom, of course," Asuka chatted away like she was discussing nothing more remarkable than the weather. "It wouldn't be worth much if you actually saw it coming now, would it?"

And Shinji found he had no way to disprove what she was saying.

But she was sick. This had to be a lie.

"Faster, Shinji, faster," she stuck a finger into his back, drawing a spike of pain. "We're nearly to the tram... yuck," she showed him the finger, which was coated in gobs of black and red. He was breathing through his nose now. Opening his mouth would be a mistake.

"You don't want to talk, huh? You're getting smarter, Ikari. Still pretty dim though. That was part of the problem, honestly."

They finally reached the tram. It was connected to the hallway by a recessed portal and an umbilical bridge.

"Be careful now," the red head said as she pushed him in. "Can't have an ingress point so susceptible to military incursion, can we? The tunnel is filled with a highly corrosive gas, so try _really hard_ not to freak out and break a seal or something." She sealed the hatchway and the bridge pulled away from the enclosed tram car.

"My work, actually," she said, settling into the forward seat and typing into the console. "I'm sure that Christmas Cake Special took all the credit though. I really wonder why I bothered. There were six hundred forty two ways a military force like, say, the JSSDF could have disabled NERV's defense grid. Did you know we were still using satellites listed under the UN's ephemeris data sheet? I mean, everyone knew they were up there!"

The tram began to move forward at what Shinji found to be a sedentary pace.

"A discretionary defense budget of seventy billion yen virtually unspent over the course of five years," she laughed, looked at him like she expected him to laugh too, "it just boggles my mind! I mean, our radar technology was _ancient!_ We were deploying mobile units during Angel attacks that had been used in NATO action following Second Impact!"

Her chuckling subsided. "Ah, where was I. Right. Got to see your personal file. Turns out you were diagnosed with a bunch of learning disabilities right... I guess it must have been right before your father left you when you were... what, three?" She made a careless gesture. "The file wasn't too specific about chronology, just a few signatures certifying that you were a few neurons short of certifiable." She twirled in her seat. "Oh, and by certifiable I mean 'certifiably retarded'. Wait, what are they calling it now? Right, developmentally disabled. No wonder your such a poor student."

His good arm was suddenly extended, his fist passing through the air above her shoulder. He had tried to... to _hit_ her? And Asuka had dodged it. He hadn't even see her move. What had he been thinking?

She grabbed his hand, threading her fingers through his own with a motion that seemed gentle, until she seized his upper arm with her other hand and folded his arm backward.

"I knew this before I had sex with you, stupid," the girl said as she forced him to knees, then down until his forehead pressed against the metal floor. Something in his back actually tore. He shrieked. Asuka held him in place.

"I was planning on the two of us getting married once the baby arrived, you know. Katsuragi has been getting a nice, fat stipend from your father and the government to pay for your 'special needs', and I kind of wanted in on that. My self-justification, of course, was that my genius and your idiocy would balance out to a merely unremarkable child and..." she was twisting his arm further. Her voice was rising, her speech quickening "...I thought you were somehow special. That despite the irreparable defects in your brain, you had a talent for piloting. That something in your makeup, something innate, something that you hadn't _earned_, made you above average in this one little niche. Then, by accident, I found out the truth!"

She released Shinji then kicked him in the side, rolling him over and grinding her heel into the hollow between his ribs. Her eyes were wild, her mouth twisted in a wide smile. She bent over and whispered, "I had a sonigraph a week before they tried to get rid of me. A week before they stripped me of the title 'Second Child'. I was so happy, it was going to be a girl! And I decided I would name it before telling you - seemed proper, since I was the one carrying the little mediocrity. Do you know what I named her Shinji? Can you guess?"

She had descended during her rant, now her nose was nearly inches from his own.

"Think really, really hard. Had access to your personal file? Female name?" She flicked his nose.

"Yui. I named the little abortion..."

His good hand was suddenly fastened around Asuka's neck, and she was the one on the ground. His body was shuddering uncontrollably.

"Asuka," he breathed, "please. Please shut up. Please don't say one more thing." His hand clamped around her throat. He couldn't seem to move it. "Please stop saying such horrible things."

Asuka struck the inside of his elbow with two clamped fingers, causing him to bend forward. She smashed her forehead into his nose, sending him reeling back. Then she folded up her legs and struck him in the chest, sending him rolling, once again, onto his back.

"Muhy," she croaked, "aren't we energhetic? You might be a half-decent berserker if you weren't half-dead, Shinji."

His nose. Of course his nose was bleeding. Why weren't his legs broken? His spine? What else could she do!

He closed his eyes. Tried to curl into a ball.

"Your mother's name was Yui. That was pretty much all the information available about her. Someone had wiped the system clean. That made me curious. I got to digging, and do you know what I found? Well, first that she was a scientist, a fairly brilliant one, far beyond the potential of little Yui. And the other thing I discovered? I bet you've guessed at it before, hmm?" he hadn't heard her stand, but she was rolling him over again, straddling his stomach now, her feet pinning his arms in place.

"Your mother is inside Unit One," she said.

He screamed.

"I found the records in a memory cache that had been physically disconnected from the MAGI and forgotten about. It was funny, you were even there when it happened, in the visuals."

Asuka rested her chin on folded hands. "You were a cute kid."

"Shut UP!" Shinji shouted, trying to get at her, his back protesting even slight movement. The pain sapping what little strength he had left.

"Yeah, so little Yui would never be a great Pilot like her daddy, because the only reason daddy was any good is because his mommy got chewed up by Eva. And she sure wasn't going to possess the genius required to matriculate with a fragmented core, like my Unit Two. Not with half of her chromosomes being retarded. You're just... shit for breeding stock, Ikari."

Asuka stared off into the distance for a while. "You know," she finally said, "your mother looked a lot like the First. Anyway," she got up carefully, hopping out of reach of Shinji. "After I found out our child wasn't going to be worth it, I went to the pharmacist and picked up what I needed to induce a chemical abortion. Actually" she giggled, "I guess you can laugh about this now, but I picked up a fiber supplement instead of Mifepristone, the chemical I actually needed. Kanji is just..."

She paused. Shinji stared up at the ceiling, now completely unresponsive. He was so tired, and the drug Kodama had given him was... he could feel it in his mind. The instinct to simply disbelieve everything Asuka was saying was difficult to fix on. Instead he was being overwhelmed by the possibility that he _might _have _had_ a child. It was a strange, sick feeling, a jumbled fiction of futures that - according to Asuka - might have been.

"It's alright to laugh, jeez," she nudged him with her foot. "You'd better not be broken, you've got a planet to save."

He didn't move.

"What a boring little boy," she dismissed him and returned to the front seat. Came back with the pistol she had shown him earlier behind the bar. Pointed it at him.

"Spring in Berlin, Ikari," she began, "I was training to be the Pilot of Unit Two. The sound of birds and that warm feeling of purpose. The sense of an encroaching enemy, against whom I would test my worth. Against whom only the chosen few, for the sake of the world, could stand. The Angels were really my dearest asset. A foil for my pride. And then," she flicked the safety. "You broke it. You broke our mythology. NERV was supposed to meet the enemy arrayed as champions, instead we got you. Puer Aeternus. A literal, unending child. I was... I was. Ayanami... is a warrior. She can follow orders, at least.

"You have been nothing but a burden. And the Angels continue. This war will not end."

Asuka pulled the gun up, pointed it at the window. Shinji's eyes refocused on her.

"It would have been better if you had never been born, if your stain didn't..."

She wasn't looking at Shinji anymore, but out the tram window. At a reflection, suspended in the tunnel Asuka had said was filled with poison gas.

"You've done your job, haven't you? You outperformed them all, and it still wasn't enough. So why not end it before your life loses every semblance of value?"

"Don't," Shinji moaned. "Don't do this."

"What is wrong with you?" she screamed, turning to him. "Stop it! You aren't even a part of this! We are discrete beings, separated by experience and a _vast_ gulf of intellect! I am greater than you, I'm the one that _can _end it. You'll go on..."

He was on his feet, and the pistol was now pointed toward the ceiling. Hands on her wrists, looking into bright blue eyes. Asuka jerked forward and

he staggered back, their lips parting.

That was it. That was his limit. Shinji was now a ghost with only purpose to guide him, vague pictures of Eva and Ayanami flashing through a mind so weary it had partially shut down.

Asuka threw the pistol. It clattered at the back of the tram. "You got blood on me!" she screamed, wiping her face. "I'm gonna. I'm gonna..."

The tram car came to a halt. The door cycled open. Asuka stared at her bloody hands, then quietly cursed. Got up and left the tram. Walked into a corridor wider than the first. There were three elevators in the wall opposite, and she entered one. Held it open. Glared. Typed a code into the control panel, peeled off her shirt, using it to wipe the blood off her face and hands.

"Asshole," she stuttered, crying and trying to hide it. The door opened. She got off, walked into a corridor exactly identical to the last. Entered the elevator next to the one she had just left. Typed in another code.

"W-what kind of place is this supposed to be?" she broke what seemed a long silence. "The season never changes. This Summer won't end. Those fucking cicada. The Angels keep coming. Where is Fall? Where is..." she trailed off. Sniffed. Pulled her shirt back on. The door opened. There was another tram.

A quiet ride. Another elevator. Then

* * *

_He wanted to lose himself in the complexity of the Geo-Front. He had wandered down a hundred empty hallways, the only sound his footsteps and the throb of machinery coming through the walls. Kaworu and Asuka and the thing that looked like Ayanami haunted him, appearing before him and just as quickly vanishing. The real Ayanami was there too, walking at his side and whispering patient council that he could sense but not hear._

_He was a murderer now, he knew what it felt like to have a body come apart in his hands, and it made his existence feel different. The thing that wasn't Ayanami stared at him, hovering by his side as he walked, beautiful and horrifying. Asuka raged and teased and confused him. He had_

_He had been tricked. They all had_

_They all had deceived him. Asuka had been strong and proud and... everything that he was not. Now she was still and silent in that hospital bed. Ayanami had left him - no, had been _taken _from him! - and the thing that remained was a mockery of her. And Misato had tried to comfort him with words he could not understand, a desperate and transparent philosophy that somehow made it all right to kill Kaworu._

_A blue-haired ghost appeared down the hall, wearing only a towel draped across her shoulders. When she saw him her features took on a hint of outrage, and she walked up to him and... vanished. The sound of Kaworu's feet falling just out of step with Shinji's own, the Angel following behind him, unseen, for a dozen paces –- echoes of the dead boy's simple expression of love. _

_Teasing, they were _teasing _him!_

_He collapsed beneath a low stairwell, pulled his arms up and cried. The room was dark, no one would see. It was okay. It was okay._

_A door cycled open above him. Footsteps. His father came into view._

_"Come."_

_Shinji had made himself small, waiting for the phantom to pass. A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him quickly, roughly, to his feet. His father's touch quickly grounded him in reality, and the boy pulled himself free with desperate energy and retreated across the room._

"_Y-you," he stammered. "W-what do you want?"_

_"Shinji," the word was a phantom: they had just taken down the Thirteenth (Fourteenth?) Angel and there was a Sound Only console and_

_"Please" next was a word he had never heard his father speak. This image, this thing was not real. He had imagined being yanked to his feet._ "_Come with me."_

_And then Shinji saw that the phantom's left hand was bandaged. An interesting unreality. When the senior Ikari walked back up the stairs and opened the door, Shinji followed. Down a hallway. A chirping noise. The ghost withdrew a computer tablet from his pocket, spoke into it. They came to a junction and_

Just like me and Asuka, isn't it? Is that why this is here, before my eyes?

_entered an elevator. And as they descended, Gendo Ikari spoke._

He talked about mother, and what she had wished for him, and for me. And how he had failed her.

He spoke these words, and it seemed that he was also _afraid_ of her, as though he expected to be confronted by her. His sentimentality was... strange. Made me feel sick. I could not imagine the man that had abandoned me saying such things. This was too unreal to be a product of my imagination, so I knew it must be true.

_They walked over the hallowed ground, which Shinji had tread upon not a day earlier in Unit One. The footprints of Eva, broken pillars on chalky material, broad splashes of gore. The crust collapsing under their feet. Tiny motes of red and orange, beaded beside his father's footsteps. The man's bandage had soaked through, was dripping. And then they came to a door, which father called Heaven's Gate._

_Here Gendo Ikari stopped before the locking mechanism, turned to face his son._

_"There are things you need to know. Things you have seen before, but should be made to understand." He opened the door, and they entered the vast space where Shinji had killed Kaworu. It was less haunted than the Third Child would have imagined. The Angel was still just as dead, and the place looked different from ground level._

_"This information will not leave this chamber, Shinji," his father said, beginning to unwrap his bandage. "Myself, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, and Rei are the only other people alive that..."_

_"That isn't Ayanami!" Shinji shouted, then clamped a hand over his mouth. Oh, but he had so wanted to say it. Father only shrugged and said: "As you like."_

_"If you speak repeat this information, it must be in this chamber," the man continued, now walking to the edge of what looked like a lake of LCL. "Do you understand, Shinji?_

_The boy gave a twisting nod._

_"This knowledge is the only thing that has allowed NERV to exist. _Do you understand _that speaking of it _anywhere _other than this chamber would be to endanger every human life in this facility?"_

_"I-I guess... I d-don't understand why that would be, no."_

_"...a fair reply," the Commander amended. "Do you know the truth of Second Impact?"_

_"Asuka said," slipped out before it occurred to Shinji that maybe this was something the Second Child was not supposed to know. He paused, anxious to see if his father would respond. The man just continued unwinding his bandage. "...she said that the First Angel caused Second Impact."_

_"That is correct," the Commander said as he removed the last of the red-soaked wrappings. "__Though what you likely do not understand is that the beings designated the First and Second Angel were not spontaneously self-happening events, as were the Angels that followed. The First Angel, Adam, was something we _found_. It was detected in an aberration of maths, because some minute changes in physical laws were being registered across the globe. Which should have been impossible. We"_

_The bandage was gone. The hand was not a hand at all, but an emptiness. The palm was missing, seemed to have been scooped out. Bone gleamed dully beneath blood and a layer of orange slime._

_"We caused Second Impact. The First Angel naturally extruded an energy field that was altering the pillars of life on Earth, and this effect seemed to be gaining strength. If it had continued the Earth would have eventually..." he paused, "...changed."_

_"B-but" a stutter? From father? "The field was difficult to measure. It was subtle, could not be detected as a form of radiation by traditional means. The closer we got to Adam, the _stranger _things became. The more what had been thought of as universal constants became variable._

"_Your mother, she was leading the team inspecting the thing's biology. It was silent, dormant. Had been waiting there for millions of years. Its autonomic functions..." Ikari paused again, seeing the lack of understanding on his son's face. He continued without elaboration. "It didn't seem to be generating a physical change corresponding with an increase in the apparent strength of it's field so she..."_

"_The field was static. It was not increasing in intensity. Your mother deduced that the strangeness appeared to be growing stronger because..." sweat was beading on Ikari's forehead. He was staring at his hand. "...there was a second field. One that had been on Earth for even longer than Adam. And this field was much like Adam's, but it was _weakening. _She..." Gendo pointed to the figure in the distance, the white humanoid nailed to a red cross. "...she arrived here before the Earth became solid, Shinji. She came here before there were proteins. What is taught as the First Impact, Giant Impact theory, that was h-her arriving._

_"Lillith."_

_Gendo Ikari knelt, his teeth gritted, the fingers on his ruined hand twitching._

_"She created the world. She m-made everything the way it is a-and then..." father plunged his hand into the LCL. He sighed, finding some relief._

_"Adam," the man finally managed. "Adam came after. Billions of years after she did. He landed here and Lillith overwhelmed him. Their fields naturally compete, and hers was already established. But they," Ikari withdrew his hand, and it was moving! A surface of bubbling liquid the color of his flesh was boiling in the cup of his missing palm. "They are alive. They grow old. And about twenty years ago, Lillith began to weaken._

_"Your mother found her, triangulated her location using the slightest of measurements. Lilith's field extends beyond this planet, beyond the known solar system. To be able to find the slightest variation of strength in that field was... your mother was..."_

I think I almost saw him break down, right there. But even in that secret place, he kept himself in check.

_"Your mother and I, we found her," he finally said. "And we told no one. We studied her discreetly from the surface and we... no. I. I was the one that decided, your mother wasn't sure. I was the one that forced the experiment."_

_Gendo's palm turned dark, the seemingly liquid flesh growing black, spurting plumes of ash. Again, he seemed to suffer._

But that seems to be what we Ikari are good at. Suffering.

_"I caused Second Impact," the man finally managed. "We had to minimize the threat of Adam and buy time to study Lillith and find a solution to her weakening field. Every living thing has grown from it, and relies upon it. Even if Adam were eventually overcome, Lillith was still dying."_

_"She won't heal me," Ikari muttered. "Rei and I, we killed Adam, and now she won't heal me." He took off his glasses, carefully tucked them into his uniform pocket, and then leaned heavily against the railing._

_"We tried to balance things out. Made dozens of prototypes in the early days, copies of Lillith. Even... even dead, their mere existence lent the White Giant a measure of strength. Unit One, also made from Lillith, has increased her power ten-fold. But she will still die. And now... Adam's energy field may outlast her. There is nothing left to sustain it, but by eliminating him a large amount of energy was released. His field will remain active for some time, and stay in conflict with Lillith's field. Angels are... are essentially focuses of conflict between the two fields, and so... and so they will continue to come. Even now," Ikari looked upward, "the Eighteenth Angel is attacking the JSSDF, those that would have destroyed us."_

It took me a moment to understand what that meant, that people were coming to destroy us. That the Japanese government was going to _attack_ us. I must have looked quite startled, because father laughed. He _laughed_.

_"They presume," he chuckled dryly. "They thought the threat was over. That the war with the Angels was over. That NERV was expendable and dangerous. But..."_

He closed his ruined hand, turned to face the distant white figure. He must have said something. I think he spoke to Ayanami, because as he faced away a splotch of color appeared just above the white giant's shoulder. At the time, I guessed that this was the thing that looked like Ayanami, the girl I thought of as monstrous.

When he turned back to me, his damaged palm had been made whole.

_"You know now, Shinji," his father said, pulling a white glove over the miraculous recovery. "And there is more, but now is not the time."_

_The Commander of NERV got up and staggered away from the lake of LCL, and past his son. The boy turned._

_"I don't want to know!" he shouted. "Why these things have happened, what does it matter? How does any of it justify what has happened to Ayanami, to Asuka? I stayed here, I piloted that monster. I wanted to be close to you, I wanted to be useful, but people have... I killed Kaworu! I crushed him in my hand and... all this is good? All this is fine? I don't understand any of this! I don't want to know it! I don't want to be here! I..._

The next thing I was going to say? Probably "I wish I were dead" or "I wish I had never been born." Father saved me from that particular disgrace.

_"I have no time for selfish misery," the Commander interrupted. "I am going to Central Dogma. You will report to Unit One's cage for sortie. If not, the Second Child will be used in Unit Two."_

What I did next? I don't even have to say it. I'm so predictable.

* * *

"Ikari."

Awake in a start. Not disoriented, but filled with a smart, hungry awareness. He was looking up into the eyes of Rei Ayanami. Above her was the towering form of a gray Evangelion.

Terminal Dogma.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**(Three of Three) - ((Now here we go for the hundredth time... going outta my fucking mind! - Mike Shinoda))

* * *

There was no pain. Back, shoulder, nose... Shinji could feel dried blood on his upper lip, but nothing else.

"Ayanami," he managed, looking up. "What?"

The First Child was close, leaning over Shinji. Her eyes were unfocused and one pale arm was draped across his chest. It felt like the other was cradling his head. Behind and above her a gray Evangelion towered.

In the distance someone was screaming.

"I have restored a portion of your stamina," the girl explained, her eyes focusing. She lowered his head to the floor and stood. "This required contact. I am sorry. There is little time."

Shinji sat up, felt the dressing on his back tighten. There was no pain, it just restricted his movement a bit. He stood carefully. Regarded the First Child as she went over to a control console built into the side of the elevated platform they were on. The distant screaming continued, seemed to be coming up from somewhere below.

She had... _healed _him?

He had known about Ayanami, about her Angelic nature, but it had never been demonstrated so openly. It was a bit stupefying, to be reminded that she was something so undeniably _other_. He had come to terms with this long ago, or thought he had, but the idea of her doing something Angelic to him was a little... what? Uncomfortable? Intimate? There didn't seem to be an adequate word for it.

No, this worry was a waste of time. Ayanami was his friend. He trusted her.

Shinji opened his mouth to thank her, but the First Child was already speaking. "We are currently under attack," she stated, looking from the controls to Shinji, then to the gray Eva.

"Unit One's locality has been contaminated. You are to pilot this instead."

"Is that possible?" he looked up at the strange Eva, so unlike his own. NERV had tried to get him to synchronize with Unit Zero before, but that had been a long time ago. He couldn't remember if that test had been successful or not.

"It contains a benign set of core data," Ayanami explained as she withdrew a hand-held computer from the pocket of her orange maintenance coveralls and began typing into it. "This was for use with the Dummy Plug system. With the level of synchronization you have achieved in Unit One, core data should be irrelevant."

She glanced up from her work. "Be advised, this unit is incapable of entering a Berserker state or exercising initiative outside the parameters fed to it from the entry plug."

"What..."

"A moment please," the First Child appeared to be using the console and her hand-held computer at the same time. Robotic apparatus mounted in tracks on either side of the gray Evangelion moved in a blur, prepping it for launch. The hiss of this mechanical motion mingled with the screams that had been drifting up from some unseen depth since Shinji had woken up. He walked to the railing opposite Ayanami's console, knowing full well what he would see.

The platform was suspended ten or so stories above the tram landing. There was a girl down there, standing by the lift controls. Long red hair wild, hands on her hips, then pointing at him, then hammering the lift call button. Shouting... no, _shrieking_ up at him, distance swallowing the meaning of her words.

This thing was not Asuka. The girl he had once known, it seemed she no longer existed. The thing below was lost. Wilted. And Shinji had no idea where Asuka had gone, or how to find her again.

That person down there had told Shinji that they had a daughter. That he was mentally handicapped. And in the haze of painkiller he had not disbelieved her. But the drug seemed to have left his body - his mind was no longer numb. It was easy now to reason through her vicious madness.

There was no way Section Two could have missed Asuka being pregnant, no physician she could have gone to that would have not reported her condition to NERV. And he wasn't... his brain was fine. He wasn't as smart as Asuka, but had been better at science and composition than either Touji or Kensuke. Back when they had been around.

His ego wasn't _that_ fragile.

Asuka Langley Sohryu is a victim, he told himself for the hundredth time. She is damaged, and I am poison to her.

The Major had been right. They should have sent her back to Germany. He couldn't help Asuka, all he could do was cook and pilot. All he could do was hurt her.

When at last he looked away from the ruin below, the shrieking grew even louder.

"There is a plug suit in the footlocker to your right," Ayanami was saying. "Change quickly and do not interrupt, I must brief you."

"An unknown entity appeared above Tokyo 3 at 1300 hours - two hours ago. Simultaneous with this the ocean along the eastern defense perimeter appeared to freeze."

The folded parcel in the footlocker was white. With a sinking feeling, Shinji unfurled it. Above him the gray Eva's head bent forward and down, the grown armor on the back of its neck splintering open. The knob of an entry plug poked out.

"They were not meant to be piloted," the First Child murmured before continuing:

"Thermal and barometric readings confirmed that this freezing was the result of an intense and unusual form of endothermic reaction distributed beneath the surface of the ocean in a circular pattern six miles in radius. Doctor Akagi hypothesized that the entity was altering the physics of that region in order to absorb tidal kinetic energy. No AT Field readings. The spectral analysis of the entity was Orange.

"Three minutes after its appearance the entity began to exhibit a second property: an intense bio-chemical reaction localized over Tokyo 3, significant enough to disrupt all unshielded electrical systems within thirty-six miles. The civil protection system and superficial communication infrastructure were disabled. The upper levels of the Geo-Front, lacking the cumulative shielding of Central Dogma, were evacuated."

There was a double-zero stenciled onto the chest of the white plug suit. All the lines and equipment were in the right place. No question, this was Ayanami's.

A crane set in a vertical track on the wall of the Eva cage came to life, moving toward the entry plug, which was sliding open.

"Thirty minutes after the appearance of the entity it was classified as the 73rd Angel due to sonigraphic similarities with the 34th Angel. Three Eva units were sortied, two of the Unit Five series and Unit Seven. Units Six and Eight were placed on standby at the launch catapult.

"There were unforeseen consequences."

The crane descended into the open entry plug and withdrew with the pilot seating. Shinji turned away from Ayanami, stripped off his swim trunks and, after brushing sand and salt off himself, stepped into the white plug suit. Resigned, he hit the sealing switch.

It actually fit his body quiet well, though the lines meant to define the wearer's hips were not flattering. The material was flat across his chest and not especially tight around the groin.

"It is unisex," Ayanami explained, turning to look at the sound of the suit sealing itself. Shinji's relief must have been obvious.

Asuka had gone quiet. Shinji glanced over the rail and caught a glimpse of her disappearing into the adjoining Eva cage. Had she heard the suit seal itself?

"Uh," he began, but Rei was already speaking again.

"A significant aspect of the Evangelion restraint system is electrical. The implications of exposing such a system to an intense electrical disruption field were not considered accurately - by the time of initial sortie, the available power to Central Dogma was such that the MAGI were unable to function at full tactical capacity.

"Both the Unit Five series began to exhibit Berserker characteristics before their transport arrived on the surface. Unit Seven managed to stay in contact with Central Dogma for three minutes after completing launch. The two rogue Eva attacked it, and in the process of evading Unit Seven attempted to use its AT Field offensively, at which point it appeared to go berserk as well.

"The Unit Five series has a number of safety measures programmed into the OS of their entry plugs, including a prohibition against AT Field deployment within the limits of the Geo-Front. These were put into place considering the power of the S2 organ each Unit Five possess and the relative inexperience of their pilots. Unit Seven possessed no such restriction – in fact, its systems are configured to utilize a defensive..." Rei closed her eyes for a moment. Shinji was now sitting in the console chair beside her, listening to her, sure, but mostly just _watching_ her talk.

She's gone off on a tangent, he marveled.

"The limit of the Angel's disruption field was already within the border of the Geo-Front. The Unit Five series was effected because they lacked an AT Field. If an Eva enters the range of this Angel's disruption field without an AT Field to counter its effect it will become erratically berserk."

"Erratically?" Shinji asked. "Isn't that... doesn't that mean the same thing as Berserker?"

"No. Evangelion neurophysiology is electrical in nature. In addition to removing the restraints normally placed on the Eva's sapience centers, the disruption field appears to interfere with the activity of the brain itself. When Units Six and Eight went berserk, they behaved in ways well outside the natural limits placed on living things. For example, the last report on Unit Six's activity stated that the Eva was eating its own hands."

Shinji stared.

"The disruption field increased in strength before the science staff could determine what was going on, and, as stated, the two units on standby were affected as well. At present all Evangelions but the Unit Fifteen series," the First Child nodded to the gray Eva, "are within the..."

The lights in the adjoining cage switched on and Asuka's screaming resumed. Ayanami glanced up from the console for a moment, her features betraying surprise.

"She just went into the cage next to this one," Shinji finally managed to interject. "Is that... why was she down there anyway?" Not that he couldn't guess.

"She wished to pilot this unit," Ayanami replied, turning her attention back to the crane controls. "She was quite aggressive. I had to force her to remain at the tram. She cannot make use of the Eva next door. Aside from all systems being locked, that Eva is dead."

An Eva... dead?

"The Unit Fifteen series had not yet reached the level of cellular development required to sustain life. They required constant energy. An hour after the Angel appeared, the effects of the disruption field became quite intense. I had to discontinue life-support on all units but this one in order to maintain contact with the Central Dogma shelters."

It took him a moment, because her face and voice betrayed nothing. To understand what had happened, and what it must have meant to Rei. Her work. That she created with her own hands. Thirteen Evangelion units. Now twelve were... dead?

"Ayanami... I'm... that's terrible."

He wanted to comfort her, but had no idea how. Nothing that came to mind seemed appropriate. After knowing Ayanami for nearly four years, he still couldn't react in a situation like this. It was _maddening_.

The First Child was quiet. The crane arrived, placing the pilot seating on the platform. She made no move to it.

"Yes," she finally whispered, then turned away. Approached the seating. The seat schema was unlike any Shinji had seen before. It did not seem to allow any space for a pilot, where the controls and seat well normally were was an ovoid white dome.

Shinji came up behind Ayanami as she reached out and touched the top of the muted white surface. The mass _shuddered_ at that contact. Ayanami moved to where white met metal and began _peeling the dome off_. Shinji moved to help her, though he wasn't entirely certain what he was doing. The First Child's hands were quaking, and he was pretty sure contact with this strange material was not the cause of it.

The white was yielding, like warm cheese. Beneath it the usual controls and pilot seat were revealed. The substance had completely filled in the space below, the topography of the seating inverted and presented to Shinji in mute white as he rolled it up. It came off all in one piece, was difficult to handle. When at last the mass was free of the seating and lowered onto the platform, it flowed together and adopted the shape of a flattened sphere.

"Second-generation Dummy Plug," Ayanami explained, breathing heavily. "Please get on. We are behind schedule."

They both got on, Shinji in the seat, the First Child sitting on the arch of metal that separated the pilot's legs, feet resting on the lip of one leg well. She tapped some commands into her hand-held computer, fingers still shaking. And suddenly Asuka was emerging from entryway on the far side of the platform. Apparently Ayanami's confidence in the adjoining Eva cage's security had been misplaced.

"...dare!" the red head was screaming. "Don't you fucking dare take this from me, First! Ich bring dich um! Ich töte dich und dein Sexspielzeug auch! SHINJI!"

He heard his name. Covered his ears. The crane began to rise.

"Shinji!" the red-head was beneath them, working the crane console to no effect. "Sie ist nicht menschlich! She pushed me back with an AT Field! Sie ist geflogen! Sie hat dich auf ihrer Schulter hier raufgezogen!

The Third Child drew his legs to his chest, mashed his ears shut. It didn't help.

"Fein!" a venomous shout. "Fine! You don't want to play? Well that's just fucking fine then, _you goddamn faggot! _Hey, First Child!"

Ayanami leaned forward to regarded the psychotic girl below.

"Yeah. First! Hey, has Shinji fucked you yet?"

"You're sick Asuka!" the Third Child shouted, trying to drown out what she was saying. "Don't..."

"He fucked me! And today, after he dropped off that pissant little apology-meal to you? After he left you down here in this terrible place? He went to the _beach_ and he fucked Kodama Horaki!"

The Third Child blushed fiercely, was carefully avoiding looking at Ayanami. He leaned over the side of the seating. Decided to try something different.

"Miss Sohryu!" he shouted down, the formal name feeling funny in his throat. Had he ever addressed her like that, even on the Over the Rainbow? "Shouldn't you be helping the Major? I know she depends on you."

The job. Every time he had seen Asuka at work she had been cool and methodical. And impressive. Maybe that would settle her down?

"Ich weiß, Ikari," the girl replied. "Screw Katsuragi. Why not just let them win, anyway? Why not just let the Angels win. Maybe they will let First keep you as a pet."

They were hanging over the open entry plug now. Looking at Ayanami, Shinji saw her face was flushed, and that the shudder in her hands seemed to have spread to the rest of her body.

"Excuse me," the First Child murmured. "Excuse me." She entered another command into her hand-held computer. The seating descended into the entry plug, shifted, locked in place.

Asuka's voice grew blessedly indistinct.

"In a-addition to the three units on the surface, the two units on standby..." Rei punched something into the computer, "At last report Unit Six was in the Administrative Park, and Eight was tearing out sections of tunnel in the E9R sector."

Sector lettering ran A to M, north to south, N to Z, east to west. The number indicated depth; Central Dogma was at 7, Terminal Dogma was 15. Finding the rogue Eva wouldn't be a problem so long as he could get an umbilicus lift and...

"The Unit Fifteen series has only five minutes of activation time per pair of Type-C batteries," Ayanami continued.

"...five minutes?" Shinji looked around the darkened entry plug. "I... I don't think I can make it to..." he lapsed into silence. It wasn't possible. An umbilicus couldn't even get him to the surface in five minutes.

"There are two spare batteries in the Eva cage next to this one," the First Child responded. "They will give you an additional five minutes, but you must replace them before the time limit has expired. The batteries are mounted just above where a human's kidneys would be, slotted downward at a 45 degree angle.

"You are going to have to fly."

"This Eva can... _fly?_"

"In theory, they all can," Ayanami answered. "During yesterday's live sync test you encountered an Eva's perception of the Earth's magnetic field. You used Unit One's AT Field instinctively, altering the gravitational vectors of the mass in the surrounding area. You can exploit this mechanism by orienting and polarizing your AT Field to the planetary magnetic field, or any local mass of sufficient density."

"I... so everything within the range of my AT Field..." Shinji visualized the effect as a physics problem. He was good with vectors. Magnetism not so much. "I'm creating a force of attraction that can counter gravity?"

"For now, that is an a-adequate understanding," Ayanami replied. "During the day, the Earth's magnetic field is compressed in the upper atmosphere. If you polarize your AT Field correctly, you will essentially be falling upward."

"Your mission," she continued, "is to disable the five rogue Evangelions. The Angel will be dealt with in a separate operation."

"How do I stop them? Can I just remove the entry plug?"

"There is no time for that, and only the Unit Five series has the pneumatic system that would" she stopped speaking again.

"Excuse me." The First Child was wearing the orange coveralls of NERV maintenance. The upper half of the suit had drifted behind her at the waist, undonned. She pulled that on now, over the thin white undershirt she had been wearing, and zipped it up.

"To disable a rogue unit, decapitation or simply severing the spine above the neck is best."

"I can't... wouldn't that damage the pilot?"

"No. The Eva's brain is using the pilot as a medium to send information down the spinal cord. Damage inflicted below the neck will be sent via nerve impulse through the spinal cord and pilot. Damage above the neck will be communicated to the portion of the spine directly above the entry plug, bypassing the pilot."

"Oh." He really should have known that.

"Yes. Five rogue units." Ayanami got to her feet. "You have ten minutes with the additional Type-C batteries."

"Sector E9R, Administrative Park, three on the surface," Shinji repeated.

"Never leave your head unshielded."

"I won't."

"And." Pause. "If you approach the battery limit prior to completing your objective, eject the entry plug. Escape. Find safety. Return to this place, if you can."

Ayanami leaned over Shinji, reaching across him to a compartment in the side of the seating. She withdrew a white nerve connector band and offered it Shinji.

"When you eject, remove this immediately," she said. "Wearing this may enhance your susceptibility to the Angel's disruption field. If you..." Pause. "If you find yourself unable to eject in time, removing the band quickly may interfere with the Evangelion going rogue. Please remember this."

Shinji nodded, slid the band onto his head.

"I will activate the Eva remotely. The synchronization process will initiate. Then you will have five minutes. Ten with the extra batteries."

"I understand."

Silence. Precious seconds ticked by. The First Child, her body still quaking, regarded him, then the dark tapered end of the entry plug. Finally, she walked to the crane vise and climbed on it, tapping something into her hand-held computer. The vise unclenched and rose out of the entry plug.

"Ikari," the First Child said. "Goodbye."

The entry plug hatch slid shut.

That last word. She was furious.

It's the Eva, he guessed. She knows I'll have to abandon it, even if I do get all five of them. And when the power cuts, this unit will die like all the others.

No, he amended as cold LCL cycled into the plug. That didn't make sense. Could she still be mad about that misunderstanding yesterday?

Maybe she was just embarrassed by what Asuka had said. He certainly was.

Flashing lights, hues of white, scintillating colors, and he synced with Eva. The interior of the cage appeared before him. Bits of scaffolding were retracting, allowing him access to the hallowed ground.

Shinji pushed all thoughts of Ayanami aside. He would do something nice for her. When he got back.

The nerve connections were a little different in this unit. He felt them out quickly by grasping his hand into a fist repeatedly until he received the appropriate feedback from the Eva.

Orienting his motor control around that nerve, he 'stepped forward', moving the Eva clear of the cage. The nerve connections required little conscious effort to maintain, once establish.

He turned back to the empty cage, saw Ayanami vanish into a crevice of machinery above the crane, saw Asuka collapsed in a heap on the platform where he had woken up.

Shinji collected the spare batteries that had been placed on the tram landing the next cage over. Only briefly hesitating at the sight of the dead Evangelion inside.

A small timer appeared on the display. Four minutes, forty-eight seconds. The Third Child collected himself, concentrated on nothing, and _dove_.

The distribution of weight was different in Unit Fifteen. The armor was a great deal lighter, and the lack of a shoulder harness lowered the center of gravity to around the midsection.

Despite the lack of apparent eyes, this Eva's vision was just as good as Unit One's. Shinji could hear the entry plug powering down around him.

He opened one eye to check his time limit, now the only part of the display still operational. Four minutes, twenty seconds. Flicking between nerve connections like this gave him a headache and made him a little dizzy, but there was no helping it.

At last Shinji descended to the level of magnetic vibration. He explored it with Unit Fifteen's AT Field, not moving to quell it just yet, trying to understand by touch alone. He tightened his grip experimentally, and the Eva was jerked off its feet and sideways, dragging itself across the barren surface of Terminal Dogma.

_Okay. If that is left..._

He got Unit Fifteen to its feet and walked beneath one of several open shafts. Examined the vibration again. Closed on it again. This time it felt like he was being crushed. The Eva's feet were driven into the ground. He quickly relaxed his 'grip'.

_And this is down..._

Shinji squeezed the vibration again, and Unit Fifteen broke the sound barrier like a soap bubble. He instantly released his grip, but the upward inertia was too great. He had travelled nearly half the total depth of the Geo-Front in the moment between deducing what to do to 'fall upward' and relaxing his hold on the AT Field. Now he tensed the Field another way, increasing the normal effects of gravity so that he slowed, and then began a rapid descent.

He tensed the AT Field again, but marginally, and his descent slowed, and then halted altogether.

Floating. He was floating! Shinji looked all around the shaft, gingerly experimented moving left, right, forward, back, up, down.

This changed _everything_. His concept of motion had expanded as transparently as his motor controls did when they meshed with the Eva's nerve connections. It wasn't as natural as walking, but... floating! _Flying!_

He found a junction, M8P, and landed in one corridor so he could partially unsync and check his time limit. Three minutes, twenty-nine seconds.

_Shit._

No more time. He dropped down the shaft again until he was at M9P, then headed northeast as quickly as he felt was safe, not bothering to touch the ground. He found the first rogue Eva in no time at all.

It was a Combat Production Model, essentially a green Unit Two, and it was digging into the walls of the corridor, exposing hallways and machinery and... and people.

Shinji saw two figures emerge from a tear in the wall and attempt to run to the other side of the corridor. The rogue Eva was after them in a flash, not a lumbering weapon but an intent and hungry predator. Shinji tensed, overstressed his connection with the magnetic field without intending to do so, and hit the murderous thing at high speed, sending it staggering backwards.

The two people. They were still on the ground, still running. The Eva. It had gone after them? Had it sensed them in the walls or...

He turned to the tear in the wall. Should not have.

Bodies twisted in the metal. And blood.

The green Eva was coming at him. Shinji slammed into it again, then fell on it, grabbing the thing's elongated chin and pushing it back back back until he felt something give. Then he tore one of rogue unit's shoulder pylons off and apart, fishing out a progressive knife identical to the one in Unit One. The blade refused to activate, probably another shortcoming of the Unit Fifteen series, but he stabbed it through the green Eva's neck and into the floor beneath it anyway, pinning it in place and, hopefully, severing the spinal cord.  
Angels. They're just Angels. Shinji thought as he unsynchronized to check his time limit. One minute, fifty-five seconds.

He blinked and became Eva again. Fell sideways at what was probably an unsafe speed, mechanically counting the passing shafts to navigate because the signage was passing by too fast to be read.

The Administrative Park was in the process of being picked bare when Shinji reached it. A white Eva with a two-eyed configuration was there, crawling on the ground, ripping trees out of the soil with its teeth. Its lower arms were covered in purple blood, and ended in broken points of bone.

The rogue Eva roared when it saw Unit Fifteen, and executed a crazy forward flip that would have surely connected had Shinji not 'fallen' to one side at the last second. Before the white Eva could recover, Shinji was behind it with the thing's head in his hands, was planting his foot in the small of its back...

No, that would hurt the pilot! He removed his foot and tried to break the Eva's neck by jerking its head sideways. It was all he could think to do. He didn't really know how to snap a neck.

The white Eva reached back, the slivers of bone cutting into the armor on Unit Fifteen's shoulders. Shinji 'fell' backward, but the rogue Eva backed up in step, still jabbing at him. So he backed up and then rammed the horrible thing as hard as he could, avoiding the broken arms and smashing it deep into the side of the park.

Shinji fell back, made a fan of his fingers and then shot forward again, hitting the rogue Eva in the back of the neck - just above the entry plug cover. Stupid. He had been hoping to penetrate to the spine or at least crush its throat, but the armor was too tough. Unit Fifteen's thin glove of inferior, grown armor shattered in a cloud of chalky residue. It felt like all the bones in Shinji's right hand had shattered as well. And that should have stopped him. At this depth the slightest pain should have sent Shinji into shock and broken his connection with Unit Fifteen. But the basis for synchronization with Eva were the A10 nerves, which were heavily influenced by emotion. Shinji was in pain, yes, but he was also angry and horrified, which seemed to have strengthened his connection with Unit Fifteen to a point where pain was something he could work through.

The white Eva was pushing out of the wall now and turning, frothing at the mouth and throwing up something brown that Shinji guessed was pulped tree. It hissed at him. And Unit Fifteen slammed into the white Eva again, grabbing it by the neck.

An end. An end, a voice chanted in Shinji's mind. Not a person. Not an Eva. Only an obstacle.

The gray Evangelion grasped the rogue unit firmly at the chin and top of the head.

No other choice. No weapons. The only sure way.

The white head rotated. Stopped. The Berserker kicked and tried to skewer him with its arms. He seized on the magnetic vibration within, shooting up to roof of the Administrative Park in an instant, jerking the white Eva after him. He felt its spine snap.

But that wasn't enough. The rogue Eva was still aware as he lowered it to the ground, its mouth still working, AT Field trying to get a hold on him. Still dangerous.

Just an angel just an angel just an angel...

He fell upward again, then just as quickly increased gravity ten-fold, forcing a quick, rapid descent. The white Eva's head was still in his hands when he hit the ground. The rest of the white Eva's body fell to earth several seconds later.

The Berserker's mouth was still working, but it was clearly dying. Its AT Field curled in around the head, growing faint and then, failing. The dead thing slipped from Unit Fifteen's fingers, falling into the reflecting pool adjacent to the Central Administration building.

_Beep b_eep beep...

Shinji unsynchronized to check the timer. Fifteen seconds. _Shit._

The spare batteries were by the bulkhead he had breached to get into the park. He snatched them up, carefully felt his lower back, and switched them out with the spent batteries. Unsynched again. The display read four minutes, fifty-eight seconds.

He took a moment to survey the Administrative Park, the broken and bare soil, the blood that had jetted out of the white Eva in midair to paint a streak of red across the landscape. It looked more than a little like Terminal Dogma now.

Four minutes, forty-five seconds. He was through the breached bulkhead, down and then sideways and then up. Came to the surface through one of the Eva deployment buildings. Found a city at dusk, the streets littered with smashed cars and

Dammit. _No._

more people. None dead that he could see, but they were on the streets among the ruined cars, moving with a weighted gait, as though sleepwalking. Walking into walls, stumbling over curbs, bumping mindlessly back and forth between stalled cars, crushed cars, burning cars.

That disruption field the Angel was producing, this close to the source it must affect people as well, Shinji guessed. When the civil protection system went down, they must have wandered free of their shelters.

It was a good thing he didn't need to use the street anymore.

Unit Fifteen soared above the buildings and quickly located one of the three remaining rogue Eva. It was hiding in the hollow of a broken building. A black-armored arm hooked over the lip of the opening where a roof should have been.

The black Eva pounced on him as he approached. Shinji dodged, seized its head as it passed by, and twisted. This time he rotated with the rogue's neck and top of the head firmly in grasp. Gravity did the rest of the work for him, complete with a crisp breaking sound he felt through his hands.

He returned the crippled Eva to the hole it had been hiding in. There was nowhere else to put it. People weren't thick on the streets, but there were still too many to risk dropping the body anywhere else.

Unlike his last target, the black Eva's AT Field quickly waned after he snapped its neck.

A different sort of model, Shinji thought. Or maybe I just did more internal damage this time.

The instant he released the limp black body, something hit him from behind, sent him bouncing off the top of the building and nearly plummeting to the streets below.

Unit Five series. They could fly too.

He slid off roof and fell to hover just over the street, then zipped north and then east between buildings, trying to catch a glimpse of what had hit him. The light...

Why was it so dark? It could not be later than four. Was this another effect of the Angel?

There! A flash of white to the south. Shinji crept forward less than twenty feet above the street.

Two white humanoid forms with wings were circling each other. The Unit Five series were ugly in design, their faces projecting outward, mouths enormous and framed by almost-comical red lips. He would have to be quick about this - they could probably hold him off with sheer force. They had S2 engines, after all.

Those ugly heads of theirs, Shinji knew, were lightly armored because of their shape. The pilot he had been assigned to during the last Angel attack had been in a Unit Five, and had managed tear a gash in her Eva's face when it got wedged between two buildings. With that in mind, Unit Fifteen came in low and fast, came up faster. Managed to catch one unit under the chin with a shoulder and, to Shinji's shock, the ugly fish-head seemed to simply explode. Had he hit it _that_ hard?

The other white Eva had flown away during the ambush, but came around quickly to counter-attack. Shinji dove, caught the falling unit by the foot, then spun and threw it at the oncoming threat. The diving Eva caught the other unit, _tore it in half_, and let it fall.

Shit. Shinji dived after the fallen unit's upper body, caught it and hammered it into the side of a building. The lower half fell to the ground out of sight. Hitting the streets and...

No. Not now. Nothing he could do about it. The entry plug was safe, the pilot would be safe. There was nothing he could do about...

About...

Suddenly, Shinji couldn't breath. He lost focus and fell to the streets below. Something was smothering him, choking the life from him! He tried to scream, but his jaw was stiff. He smashed his face into the surface of the road, again and again. Something cracked. He tasted air. With renewed frenzy he screamed and tore gray bits off himself, feeling the flesh peel away and not caring because at last he could breath!

Gasping for breath, Shinji found that he had miraculously fallen on a stretch of road that seemed to have been undergoing construction, and so been cordoned off and clear of people. Perhaps the bottom half of the split Unit Five had dropped in a similar location. The Third Child was in no great hurry to find out.

The remaining Unit Five circled high above him, leering. Shinji zipped between buildings, breaking line of sight while he tried to come up with a plan. Usually he had the Major to rely on for tactical support. Getting within arm's reach of the thing was a bad idea. Maybe if he could tear its wings, get it on the ground...

People in the streets. Scratch that. He would just have to overwhelm it with speed. Those wings, Shinji was pretty sure they didn't give the Unit Five half as much control as he had... No, he'd probably have to move too fast to outmaneuver it. He wasn't any good with fine control at high speeds just yet. Too risky.

But he had to be running out of activation time. Best to just hit the thing with a focused AT Field and be done with it. He landed on the top of a building and watched the white Eva approach, then lazily circle. He reached out and felt a powerful but diffuse AT Field, puncturing it with no trouble. The white Eva's head exploded and it tumbled from the sky.

Shinji would have moved to catch it, he really would have, but at the moment he couldn't move at all. And something was tearing at him, ripping at his mind, making it hard to think. Several ideas were arranging themselves slowly in his head, the first being that he must have passed the ten minute time limit already - probably when he had torn the armor off Unit Fifteen's face in order to breath.

The second fact was that Ayanami had told him to keep his AT Field up, to never for an instant allow the Eva's brain to be subjected to the influence of the Angel's reaction. He had forgotten. He had reached out to destroy the Unit Five's brain, and left himself vulnerable.

He tried to unsynchronize with Unit Fifteen but couldn't. There were only faint images of the entry plug, filled with an empty white plug suit and nerve connecting band.  
No. Shinji tried to raise the AT Field again, tried to move.

No, no no no! He could feel himself sliding free of Eva. Parts of Unit Fifteen numbed as his nerve connections were severed, one after another. Sight was the last to go. He couldn't see anything, only feel himself falling upward to where the Angel waited, where he would burn out, be unmade in a strange sort of terrible heat that he could feel as he finally slipped completely free of Eva.

But instead of rising further to meet the Angel, Shinji Ikari fell.

* * *

Dusk melted away, and the buildings and people of Tokyo 3 were plainly visible. Red, throbbing mountains rose in the distance against a white horizon. Beyond those lumbering shapes was a great chasm where the ocean should have been. A knot of energy hung in the sky, long and skinny, a twisting of dark light that seemed to extend in directions the eye could not follow.

Shinji hovered over this landscape, and beside it, and inside it. He could make out every detail of the people in the streets, could count the change in their pockets and see the flickering light of their minds. He could see inside the three rogue Eva he had dispatched on the surface, into darkened entry plugs where pilots writhed in terror and psychosomatic pain.

The Third Child saw all this in an instant, before falling away. The landscape shrank, taking with it all color and definition. Now he was surrounded by sheer nothing, a vast expanse of of emptiness interrupted only by the slightest hues of gray. Hundreds of vortices and eddies of this shade filled his sight, pulsing with a sort of intelligence, gathering together to flicker in descending fractal patterns. The light of some conveyed a nameless but powerful emotion. A sort of... attraction.

One vortex in particular began growing larger. Without a point of reference, Shinji could not be certain if the flashing lights were approaching him, or if it was the other way around.

There was no sensation of movement, no sensation at all beyond sight and the varying attraction of the different collections of gray. The vortex grew large in his sight, until it was nearly all Shinji could see.

And then he was somewhere else, sitting on a bed in a room with a large window. His bedroom. But that didn't make sense, his bed was smaller than this one, and he lived in a storage closet. There weren't supposed to be any windows.

Stupid, a voice in the back of his head said. This has been your bedroom for four years, since we moved out of the old apartment. Dad told Mom it was a shipping error, but he really got you the double bed with a nudge and a week, saying embarrassing things about how busy you would be in high school.

This is our room, see the red hand print we made in pre-school for Mom? See our rockcrest penguin alarm clock? See Asuka?

Asuka.

This moment of cognitive dissonance played out rapidly, two different ideas of what Shinji Ikari was reconciling and becoming composite. Asuka had only time to take half a breath through the total length of the process.

The red-head was staring down at Shinji, her eyes moist, mouth slack. There was a connection between them, a line of energy warping outside the world that connected his mind to hers. It looked a little like the angel in the sky from... from the place he had just left.

He could feel what Asuka felt, could see the memories playing out in her inner eye. And he could sense her thoughts speeding up, growing chaotic and desperate, trying to make sense out of something.

He could not remember what he said to make her that way, to drive her to what seemed the edge of despair, only that it was horrible and untrue. For a moment he had been someone else, someone that hated Asuka Langley Sohryu, and that person had been... unkind.

But this new Shinji felt differently. In fact, his emotional response to seeing a healthy Asuka, even one metaphorically crumbling before him, was so potent that he forged into words something this world's original, unadulterated Shinji had only just begun to suspect. He held the words in his mind and weighed them against memory, found them in no way deficient.

But he was afraid though, of what the words meant, of Asuka, of growing up. But seeing her shaking before him, tears finally spilling over and down, a half-formed curse in her throat, Shinji did not not see any other option.

"I love you," he said.

And Asuka fainted.

The world shifted. The Shinji Ikari who lived in Tokyo 3 and piloted Evangelion Unit One became distinct from the Shinji Ikari that lived in Tokyo and wanted to be a novelist. The landscape shrunk around the Third Child, just as Tokyo 3 had, and he was hovering in nothingness once again.

Then, again, there was a sensation of movement. Some distant location attracting him, overpowering the local influence of nearby vortices. He had no control over his course, but something greater than dumb attraction seemed to direct him, bobbing and weaving him through the various collections of scintillating gray light.

A pinpoint of white appeared in the distance, standing out in the nothingness as easily as the gray did. This point seemed to be Shinji's destination. As it grew larger, what had begun as a point resolved itself into a sphere, which was not composed of solid color but rather a milky transparency. There was something inside the sphere... the barrier? Solid white, with curves that suggested the organic, the object was first too small to make out, then too grand to be understood.

Shinji reached the milky barrier, and then collapsed onto a cold floor, making a noise that was between a scream and a laugh, desperately crying.

There was no other Shinji Ikari here to mitigate the experience of the empty place he had just emerged from. He had to work it out on his own. And so Shinji was a frenzy of mental activity, undergoing some self-validation processes that had become familiar, though not second nature, in the course of his mental exposure to Eva. Tears fell not from sorrow, but for the same reason one cries over cooking onions. His eyes had been exposed to something, and were trying to flush it away.

He had...

He had fallen somewhere. Not down, but in some other direction. Out of everything. And then...

"Entschuldigen, Sie sind?"

The Third Child looked up. There was a tall desk set along one side of the room. A thin Caucasian man stood behind it, looking at him with undisguised curiosity.

There was a sound like cooking fat. Shinji looked down. Where his tears had fallen on the hardwood floor there were now spots of black, issuing wisps of smoke.

"Zhongwen?" the man spoke again.

Shinji shook his head, gingerly reaching down to touch the burns.

"Japanese, is it?" the man tried a third time.

"Yes," the young man responded hollowly. The black spots were ice cold. Frost was forming around them.

"You are here for the..." the man paused, seemingly searching for vocabulary, "Festival of the Dead?"

"I'm imagining this," Shinji replied, rising.

"Ah," the man replied, running a finger over his neat mustache. "You would be Shinji Ikari then?"

"This isn't real," the Third Child clenched his fists. "I have to wake up."

"Welcome to the Aedes Haus, Mister Ikari," the man continued. "For you, we are always open."

He had arrived in a waiting area of sorts. Chairs lined the walls. Beyond the large picture window set opposite the mustachioed man's desk was a street teeming with strange people. Caucasians. Taking it in, Shinji was forced to admit this was an unlikely dream. Nothing was familiar.

But it simply could not be real.

The door to the outside opened and something entered. There was a flash of glassy black and burning red. Without any thought save blind panic, Shinji turned around, snatched up a chair, and hurled it at the window. Surfaces shifted. Vision became toxic. _It _caught the chair, and the Third Child was already turned, jumping over the desk and passed the flustered host, down the hall beyond. As he ran, his mouth seemed to move of its own accord, spouting words he did not mean to think. Things that he could not contain in his mind as even abstract ideas.

That thing, that fucking shape. Burning a hole in his brain.

And then he slammed into something, and the black-and-red thing was right there, pinning his arms to his sides and forcing him to see and see and see.

**Well now**, came a voice. **What have we here?**

* * *

The civilians that had been on the street the night before had been evacuated or bagged and carted away. Now the shelters were being opened. Misato Katsuragi watched it all, directed it as best she could with a set of binoculars and the efforts of the Tactical Division. She did this from an executive penthouse in the Akia building, the tallest central structure in the city not in danger of collapse.

Every piece of communication equipment on the surface and several levels below it had been completely destroyed. The angel's AT Field had apparently been strong enough to de-nature copper and fiber-optic cable into non-conductive states, and it seemed the satellites in geo-synchronous orbit overhead had been effected as well. NERV and the UN relief crews were doing things by N2 generator and line-of-sight. Misato had a laser-relay to one of the MAGI and that was about it.

Unit Zero was approaching from the west, enormous reams of colored material in its arms, an Eva's features stretched flat and folded. The Major adjusted the channel on her short-wave and hit the encrypt switch.

"Okay Rei, we need to finish the gap between 7th and 9th street. Don't use the mall complex, it isn't structurally sound."

"Yes ma'am," came the characteristic reply.

The blinds were a huge pain, but necessary. The Major had broken down all the ½ scale Eva decoys in storage, having Unit Zero bind the material around certain buildings, creating a funnel for the UN soldiers to work with. The civilians needed to be kept orderly, and that meant keeping them out of sight of the various bits of angelic debris that were strewn across the city.

The Major was used to gore on a grand scale, but the remains of the 73rd angel disturbed her. It wasn't anything as simple as butchery –- that would have been easy. No, the hulking red monstrosities seemed to shift in nature, the surface of each changing from something soft and torn –- flesh? -– to something like dripping geode. Half the time these corpses, some of which were taller than any building around them, appeared to be spouting precious stones from all of the numerous gouges and rips that had apparently killed them.

Watching these things shift, glinting in the sunlight, was grotesque in an unidentifiable way. Unsettling. Take that together with the peculiar fact that none of the shell-shocked civilians recovered so far seemed to be responding to sedatives, and you had a riot waiting to happen.

At least the people coming out of the shelters looked more or less normal, Misato reflected from the window. The people that had been on the surface during the attack... Those that had survive had appeared mummified, nearly all human features lost in wisps of peeling flesh.

"We need to talk," came a voice behind her. Ritsuko.

"Why aren't..." Misato turned, stopped herself. Directed her question to Akagi's Section 2 handler instead. "Why isn't she assisting Lt. Ibuki?"

"The Eva recovered from the surface are a total wash. Only the cores survived," the good doctor cut off whatever the agent might have said. "With the exception of Unit Fifteen, they're all being dismantled. It is a simple procedure that does not require my expertise."

"Why is she here?" the Major repeated her question, still not looking at the obtrusive woman directly.

"I have to talk to you, dammit!" Ritsuko shrieked, drawing glances from across the room. Half a year of virtual house-arrest had not been kind to her. Her figure had shrunk, her natural brown hair cropped short, breasts shrunken.

She almost looks like a man, Katsuragi reflected coolly.

"Okay Akagi," she said. "Talk."

"None of this makes any sense," the scientist exclaimed. "The specifications on-file for the Fifteen series don't match up with the timeline that little... that the First Child-"

"Lt. Ayanami, you mean," Misato's tone was reproachful.

"Look!" Akagi crossed over to the window. "Unit Fifteen launched at 1500 hours with two type-C dry cells. Ayanami-"

"Lt. Ayanami," the Major corrected again.

Her former friend drew back, features clouding.

This woman destroyed Asuka, Katsuragi thought.

"_Lt. Ayanami_ is lying to you," Akagi's tone was low and menacing. "Either the timeline is wrong or the specifications she submitted are wrong. Forensics place Unit Fifteen within the limits of the Geo-Front for six minutes, thirty-two seconds. The Unit Fifteen series were intended to only function with type-C batteries, which should have given it five minutes activation time."

"Shinji launched with a spare set," Katsuragi turned away, brought the binoculars up again. "It's all there in the timeline Rei submitted."

"Less than ten minutes total? You really think your child managed to take out three Eva, six of those red... extrusions, and the Dirac-type Angel causing it all in under three minutes?"

Katsuragi was focusing on the shelter exit between 7th and 9th street. Unit Zero had gotten the blind up and the relief crews were cutting the shelter's heavy steel hatchway open.

"I'm not sure I see your point," the Major responded absently.

"What if she's got S2 engines down there?"

"Well, there you go. Mystery solved."

"Did you even read her proposal back in December? Isn't that your _job?"_

On the street below the shelter was finally breached. Relief workers gathered around the entrance, riot shields drawn. No one came out.

"Kikuyu," the Major called to one of the technicians, "flag 7th and 9th for biometrics real quick. See if any of their sensors are intact."

"Those toys of hers use _dummy plugs_ Major!" The doctor was yelling again. Not even bothering to look self-conscious about it anymore either, Misato saw at a glance. "Dummy plugs with S2 engines? That doesn't bother you?"

The Major looked back to the shelter. A UN crew in riot armor was going inside. "All the S2 engines we've recovered from the Angels are accounted for, aren't they? Or have you figured out how to make them, _Doctor_?"

"We can't know what she's capable of!"

All right. That was enough. Misato wasn't going to take this shit in front of her staff.

"Doctor Akagi, let me spell this out for you clearly," she turned and faced the shrunken woman, face neutral, her voice even. "What I am trying to deal with right now is the death of, at last count, twenty-three NERV employees and at least a hundred civilians. What I am trying to deal with is the fact that all the munitions and defense mechanisms I've spent four years installing in this city appear to have been irrecoverably destroyed.

"What does it fucking matter _how_ Shinji was able to do his job? The angel is dead, and three-fourths of the city has been destroyed, Doctor. We lost three Eva, and another two won't be operational anytime soon. Half of our junior pilots are in the hospital, one is expected to die. And all of Lt. Ayanami's work is gone.

"It all happened on my watch. I'm trying to manage this as best I can. You are interfering with that.

"What she is going to do now," the Major addressed the Section 2 handler again, "is go down to Central Dogma and get Caspar up so I can talk to the very expensive UN imaging satellite when it passes overhead in... Tanako!" she addressed a technician sitting cross-legged before several monitors and keyboards. "When is that eye going to be in place?"

"About two hours, Miss Katsuragi," the young man replied. Misato groaned inwardly. Taro Tanako had gotten his job because of a contact in the Technical Division. She wasn't sure who. The kid was by no stretch of the imagination a computer genius, but he was good at his job. If only she could drill some military discipline into him. Or at least discretion.

A small worry for another time.

"So fifteen minutes before that," the Major finished. "Dismissed." She turned back to the window just in time to see someone being dragged out of the 7th and 9th shelter. Stark naked and unnaturally pale, only a few wisps of long hair still attached to their scalp, the figure - Misato couldn't immediately tell if it was a man or a woman – thrashed pale arms and gnashed teeth at the UN workers.

To her right, Akagi was arguing with the Section Two agent.

More people emerged from the shelter in various states. None of them had a full head of hair.

"Major Katsuragi," the handler was talking to her. Why hadn't they left? "Doctor Akagi has two pieces of information she feels are immediately relevant. I have agreed to convey them. The first is that the majority of the survivors will recover. Their aspect and appearance is a result of the angel's AT Field disrupting their epidermal cells and, to a lesser effect, their minds. This was what she originally came her to tell you. I believe she became agitated when she saw Unit Zero.

"The second thing: Where is the Taikyonoma building?"

Misato looked at the skyline as Ritsuko and her handler walked away.

Maybe something was wrong with her. Maybe Ritsuko hadn't walked up sixty flight of stairs just to whine about the autonomy the Commander had given Rei. Maybe...

The Major waited until the doctor had disappeared into the stairwell before going over to Taro Tanako. One of the three computers he was working on showed a raw feed from Melchior as it orchestrated the evacuation with UN systems. Another showed a series of incident reports logged by the UN, which Katsuragi had instructed him to monitor. The third monitor showed a wireframe of the city.

"Taro, put that up on the big screen," Misato gestured to the last monitor. "Skin it and orient around this location, okay?"

It took nearly ten minutes. The portable systems were running on MAGI emulation software, which was not viewed favorably by anyone accustomed to the real thing. The Major made a mental note to ask Ibuki about getting someone to streamline the program, or give her some idea what hardware would run it faster. While waiting she received reports on three shelters, a weather forecast that promised heavy rain, resolved a red-tape issue involving UN vehicles in a NERV car park, and confirmed that no one had any idea where Asuka was. Which was inexcusable.

Never mind that Asuka had begged off four days vacation to lounge about with the Horaki girls. Never mind that she hadn't made her way to the Central Dogma shelters the moment Shinji had launched. This was looking to be a three day operation, easy. No way could Misato stay in command the whole time. No amount of caffeine would help, and that soldier-speed shit they were dishing out in the JSSDF made her stupid. Taking temporary command was the sort of thing she had been training Asuka for, and the little bitch couldn't even be bothered to show up?

I'll transfer her, the Major decided. Send her back to the German branch suddenly. Can tell Shinji that she requested it.

She didn't like the idea of lying to the Third Child, but it would be easier that way. Better.

Maybe the Angels had broken Misato Katsuragi the same way Eva had broken Asuka. Maybe she hadn't emerged from catatonia without her own mental scars. It seemed that hate came so easily to her, stayed fresh in her mind when it might have faded from others. She still hated the Angels but... that same emotion had kept her away from Kaji. And now maybe it was the only thing keeping her from forgiving Ritsuko. But...

But she just didn't like Asuka anymore. The Major could pity the girl, because she hadn't asked to have her mind screwed with, but every time she saw Asuka in their apartment, Misato felt sick inside. And mad. Since Shinji had admitted to being raped by her, Asuka had become an intruder in the Katsuragi household. An outsider. At work it was easy to treat her as just another member of the staff, but at home Misato was just reminded of how Shinji had threatened to leave, and what that had made her feel.

It made her hate Shinji too. And she didn't like that at all.

At last the large screen displayed a photo-realistic view of the skyline to the west. Tanako had obviously been listening to her exchange with Ritsuko and her handler because Taikyonoma Tower was outlined in red. One look out the window and the difference was obvious. No tower.

"Was Taikyonoma a mobile asset?" Misato asked.

"Yes," Tanako replied. "And no, it wasn't one of the three that managed to invert during the crisis. Nor was it one of the forty-one inverted to facilitate relief efforts."

Unsurprising. That was in one of the most heavily damaged sectors. A towering red mountain wept rubies near the empty space where the tower should have been. Behind that remnant of Angel was a glassy-smooth swathe of destruction, left as a snail would leave a trail of slime. But it didn't appear that the Angel had gotten all that close to where Taikyonoma Tower should have been. She wasn't high enough to see the base... maybe it had been knocked over?

Yeah. Like Ritsuko would give her something that easy.

"Get the plate-stress records for the sector Taikyonoma Tower is in, and the four sectors around it," she instructed Tanako. "Go with the three lowest ratings in the last month, average them out for each sector, then figure out what the current weight is. If the numbers are similar, try subtracting the number of UN assets in those sectors, say, 99 kilograms for every person, 15 tonnes for each half-track, and 4 tonnes for each light vehicle. If you need any more specs, ask the UN computer."

"I'll need to talk to maintenance and have someone read the weight on the plates manually... that might take a while."

"Fine."

"Should I have them do a census of all sectors?" the young man ventured. "I mean, it might be easy to find this building if the weight records don't match up."

"After you do those sectors first."

"O-okay."

The Major stood behind Tanako just long enough to see him pick out the correct sectors, then turned and neatly collided with Rena Yuimoto, one of two people working biometrics in the Tactical Division.

"Sorry!" Yuimoto yelped, jumping back a step. "I just thought, um, you should know that Miss Ayanami is acting a little, uh, oddly."

"Show me."

The Major followed Yuimoto to the solarium of the penthouse, where she and Ken Atachi had set up the physical readout apparatus for Rei and Unit Zero. There was a jacuzzi and what appeared to be the entrance to a steam room in the far corner, and on the roof outside a not-so-small pool. Misato wondered if Ken would get around to coaxing Rena into one of those. Both techs were in their late twenties and still single as far as she knew. Rather unusual, with all the tax incentives in place to bolster the flagging Japanese population. So long as Ken reserved his grab-ass for when they were off-shift, Misato didn't care what they did. Beyond a polite interest, of course.

"Major," Atachi greeted, getting up. Though he had no military background, the kid at least had a sense of command.

"Tell her Ken," Rena murmured, bringing a hand to her mouth as soon as Atachi's first name passed her lips. Misato grinned.

"The First Child's endorphin levels and heart rate are higher than normal," Atachi began, showing Misato a screen that had two sets of moving graphs on it. "This," he pointed to the graphs on the right, "is the First Child's nominal parameter. What she has exhibited in the past. This," he gestured to the graphs on the left, "is the data we're getting from her now. Notice the peaking endorphin levels and the higher heart rate?"

He was nervous about something. Repeating himself. "What does that mean, exactly?" the Major asked.

"Um," Rena began.

"We... kind of know," Atachi interjected. "It's just sort of... unusual."

Misato looked from one tech to the other. "What?"

"Well, we've both done our training using a wide range of biometric data," Atachi began. "There are certain activities one can identify by the particular levels of divergence from a nominal reading."

"Okay. What. Does. It. Mean?"

"It, uh," Rena began again. "We haven't encountered this, um, particular permutation of data from Miss Ayanami before."

"We consider it..." Atachi started to add something, but stopped. "I'm... I think I'll just go get some tea." At that the young man hurried off.

"Okay, okay," the Major wanted to hurry this up. "What's so embarrassing that Mister Atachi didn't want to be around?"

The tech blushed. "Well, what we're seeing here is Ayanami... you know... um. Sex stuff."

Misato stared. "Excuse me?"

"Agh, I mean," Yuimoto was actually looking away now. "She's thinking about... sex stuff. We... we thought that you should know, because we've got nearly four years of data on her in these computers and nothing like this has happened before. Ever. We... we think it might indicate... well, Atachi thinks it might indicate stress or... well, it just seemed unusual, and we thought you should know."

"Well," the Major gestured to the monitor, "can you say for certain that this is stress-related? Something that will definitely affect the First Child's performance?"

The young woman, sweating now, shook her head. "I'm sorry, we shouldn't have brought it up. It was just so unusual I... it just kind of leapt out at me, and I mentioned it to Ken," she winced at the repeated slip-up, "and..."

"Don't worry about it," Misato said, fighting the urge to physically comfort the distraught woman. "I appreciate you telling me this. I agree that it seems a little unusual."

That was an understatement.

Yuimoto and Atachi weren't biometric specialists. They were usually only concerned with integrating the various defense systems under the tactical division with city zoning, and fielding any queries from other divisions or municipal interests about that. But they had been trained to use these systems, and they monitored the pilots during Angel attacks, though Maya Ibuki was the one Misato relied on to interpret the data in a tactical situation. What they were observing was probably correct. Misato didn't put too much stock in machine mind-reading, but it sounded so quirky it just might be the truth.

"Oh," Yuimoto was looking down at Unit Zero's monitor. "There was another thing I noticed. Miss Ayanami is, hm, pulling a lot of data over an encrypted line. I know that's, hm, technically against protocol but..."

One thing after another. Misato inspected the data flowing into the entry plug and saw that, indeed, the First Child appeared to have set up some data channels that weren't encrypted to any NERV key.

The Major returned to the impromptu communications center and tried to come up for an explanation for the First Child's behavior that didn't involve the quiet girl streaming hardcore adult entertainment off some private MAGI partition. Her performance hadn't suffered -– Misato quickly reviewed all the information available about Unit Zero and only got complaints about the noise it made moving over rubble, and one incident report where some idiot had been too close to the trailing umbilical cable and got a broken arm for his trouble. No accidentally knocking over buildings, no stepping on rescue equipment –- stuff the Major would have expected of Asuka a year ago. Rei was Rei, and Misato simply didn't have enough information.

So she keyed the encrypt button on her short-wave and asked.

"I am monitoring the Third Child," Rei replied, when asked, circuitously, about the encrypted data.

So, Third Child, sexual thoughts. Not something Misato needed to know. Unexpected... but maybe a little relieving? She could at least guess at a few answers. But it did beg one big question.

"Where is Shinji?" the Major asked, moving to one corner of the communication center, out of range of Tanako and the people fielding UN radio traffic. Ayanami's timeline had concluded that the Third Child was secure, and Misato had been in such a hurry to get to the surface she had kind of... kind of taken it for granted.

"He is inside Unit Fifteen."

Misato stared at the mouthpiece. Took a deep breath, "you mean he's..."

"Been absorbed, yes."

Suddenly it was very hard not to scream.

"Junior Tactical Officer Sohryu has been absorbed as well."

"What!" Misato yelled, starting to pace. "How did... why..." No sense. What the First Child just said did not make the slightest bit of sense.

"I do not know how it happened," came the reply, which seemed to have a hard edge to it. Had that been there earlier? Had Misato failed to notice it?

"When? Did she... did she launch with him?" No, it wasn't in the timeline. Rei would have included that.

"Pilot Ikari was absorbed at some point during his encounter with the angel. Unit Fifteen was retrieved once the Angel's effects diminished and secured in Terminal Dogma. Further information is classified."

Misato closed her eyes again. Placed her forehead against the window glass. Counted to ten. By 'classified,' Rei meant that it couldn't be discussed over the air, encryption or no. Rei was not taunting her.

She keyed the short-wave, did not move from her position against the glass. "Pilot Ayanami, when your maneuvers are complete, you will come to the Akia building to pick me up. We will then proceed down via a diagonal access shaft to the Eva cage assigned to Unit Zero. From there you will take and show me everything that has anything to do with what you just told me."

Silence. Static.

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

All the shelters were emptied by 1800 hours. The sun went down and floodlights went up, mounted on the side of the more stables buildings, each muzzled with a diffuser that covered the streets below with a cold approximation of daylight.

A new problem had arisen, one that both Maya Ibuki and Ritsuko tried to explain to the Major with no success. Apparently there was something called "vacuum energy" - potential energy inside vacuum tubes. The Angel's AT Field had somehow altered this energy into a more volatile state. For this reason the darkened street lamps that lined the main thoroughfares of Tokyo 3 suddenly had the explosive force of a howitzer shell. Worse, the former and current head of Project E both agreed that it would be a significant concession to allow the UN forces to collect the affected objects.

"Altering vacuum energy is incredibly dangerous," Ritsuko had explained. "The theory is that such a change could propagate throughout all surrounding vacuum, so while it might cause a big explosion here, if altered vacuum energy were released into outer space..." and then Ritsuko had gone so far off-base that Misato had found herself nodding at the communication screen, just wanting the doctor to get to the what-we-are-going-to-do-about-this-is part of her explanation.

So now APCs going down every street in Tokyo 3, controlled remotely by members of the Maintenance Division, chopping off the top of lamp posts as they went and detonating the unlikely explosives in a high-pressure chamber mounted at the top of the each vehicle. Apparently ridding the city of yet another threat.

That was only the beginning, of course. Though there had been ordinances in place that required LED use within the city limits, excepting street lamps and traffic signals, private use of vacuum-sealed light sources was a distinct possibility. The Major had given the Technical Division her blessing and authority to deal with the problem as they saw fit, then tried to push it out of mind.

Commander Ikari had left in a VOTL shortly after the all-clear was given, off on one of his strange errands that had nothing to do with the UN. Petitioning some private group for funds to rebuild, probably. Maybe SEELE itself. Fuyutsuki had taken Lt. Hyuga and Aoba to Tokyo 2, to act as liaison with the UN forces and the Japanese government.

That meant the Major was the ranking officer in NERV Japan, and that the mystery of altered vacuum energy wasn't something she had time to understand. There was more than enough shit to worry about already. Delegation was the rule of the day, but there was still so much that required her attention.

Her staff changed. The second shift was airlifted onto the roof of the Akia building via VOTL, and the first shift disappeared down the stairwell to find quarters in the levels below. When Rei finally reached the limit of her deployment, the Major had no time to discuss Shinji.

At 0200 the UN demolitions crew started knocking down buildings. By 0700 they had taken down every unstable structure to the north and east of the Major's position. NERV reclamation followed the demo crews, piling the rubble onto a convoy of heavy trucks that never seemed to end.

At 0730 Taro Tanako's shift replacement, an older man whose last name was all Misato could recall -– Hanamura -– reported that it did not appear Taikyonoma Tower was within the city limits. It could not be accounted for as debris on its sector or the four surrounding it. Or the sixteen sectors surrounding those. Misato could not imagine what this meant.

Another day passed before Lt. Hyuga was sent to relieve her. By then NERV squads with some kind of special detector were scouring the city for vacuum energy, and construction crews were getting ready to start work on some stationary assets in sectors that had been cleared of debris. It was also around this time that Ai Sakamoto, the Seventh Child, slipped into a coma from which she was not expected to recover.

* * *

Misato had met Rei Ayanami for the first time half a year prior to the 3rd Angel attack, when the girl had gained enough mastery over the Eva simulation programs to begin combat training. The Major –- then Captain -– was supposed to oversee the First Child's training program with her old friend, Doctor Akagi.

The First Child had looked sickly and rude to Misato's supposedly-trained eye. Her flesh was pale, her responses minimalist and spoken with little volume. She never made eye contact with anyone but the Commander -– that bothered Katsuragi too. She wasn't entirely sure this odd girl could be trusted. Everything she had learned about psychology in college told her that the First Child was being evasive and self-important. That analysis, rooted in shoddy textbook psychology, had come from a Misato who had spent a year looking after the august Asuka Langley Sohryu. The Major's first impression of Rei was so divorced from reality it still crept into her mind from time to time, shaming her.

In the present, the Major had finally caught up with Rei in the locker room beneath the control center where harmonic and synch tests were conducted. The young woman had just completed another deployment and was slipping out of her plug suit. The Major got an eye-full of the First Child's backside before politely turning around. That glimpse reminded her of their first meeting, and how Katsuragi had thought the girl's skin was pale.

No, not pale, Katsuragi's exhausted brain informed her. White. Thick white. Marble white. Angelic.

Angelic. The Major seized on the word, examined it, turned to watch Rei pull her clothes on. What was she seeing, exactly? Was this a person, or a thing? Could her biometric readings really be compared to those of a human? Wasn't that just more textbook psychology?

God, she needed to sleep. Two days awake and she was having problems forming thoughts correctly. Didn't she trust the First Child?

"Rei," the Major began, waiting to be acknowledged by the pilot and trying to mask the slur in her voice, "tell me about Shinji and Asuka."

"Major. Pilot Ikari was absorbed during the operation to disable the rogue Eva," the First Child recited as she buttoned up her overshirt. "Junior Tactical Officer Sohryu remained in Terminal Dogma, despite not possessing appropriate clearance. I requested several times that she go to the Central Dogma shelters, but she refused."

"When it was clear the effects of the angel's field were diminishing, at around 2100 hours, I went to the surface in Unit Zero," here the First Child paused in the act of pulling on her white uniform hose. "I have not been given the authority to deploy Eva at my own discretion. I tried to contact Command. Failing that, I chose to interpret my standing orders to include the deployment of Unit Zero."

The hose was pulled up. "I did not explicitly describe this in my timeline. I wanted to consult with you about the legality of such an action before submitting a full report."

"Don't worry about it, Rei," Misato sat on the bench now. "You exercised a soldier's prerogative." Of course if the UN gets a hold of anything saying that, if they find out we tolerate this sort of thing where Eva is concerned, there could be problems. Big problems. "You will submit a draft of this report to me directly. I will handle if from there. Do you understand?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. Now tell me about Shinji."

"Yes ma'am. Unit Fifteen was not within the limits of the city. It was at the coastal perimeter, where the initial Dirac phenomena had manifested. It was sitting cross-legged, slumped forward. The entry plug was absent, and at first I thought that Pilot Ikari had ejected. As I approached the Eva swiveled its head to watch me, and then raised a hand in greeting."

As she spoke, Ayanami fastened the skirt around herself, affixed the Special Dispensation Lt. bars to the neck of her uniform. Pulled on her shoes.

"It was Ikari," Rei continued, sitting on the bench between lockers. Misato joined her. The young woman looked down at her hands. "He had- he had been absorbed. Was inside the core. The repository of an Eva's soul. He had gone there, to the place where none have returned."

"Rei, we've... lost him before," Misato said, moving closer to the girl, placing a hand on her shoulder which was...

It was trembling.

"Unit One had a soul. Has a soul," the First Child replied, her voice suddenly strange. Not flat or soft, or neutral. "Unit Fifteen had a simulacrum. A thing in the correct shape to generate an AT Field. A blank with no will. When the entry plug lost power, he must have been too deep. He must have been forced into the core, and there was nothing there to push against, nothing which appreciated the distinction of self.

"It ate him."

The First Child looked small in the uniform. Normal. Lost.

"Ikari followed me from the surface, I could not have moved him otherwise. Unit Fifteen's structure had been modified, its mass increased by a factor of ten. He had fashioned a passive counter-gravitational AT Field around the Eva so as to move about on the ground without sinking into it. I had to construct a similar effect in Terminal Dogma with an array of dummy plugs before he was willing to enter a cage and rest."

"What do you mean, he gained mass, Rei? How did he do that?"

"I do not know. The Evangelion can heal itself with raw materials. In theory it can absorb both mineral and protein to generate new flesh. What has happened to Unit Fifteen is different. Its muscle, bone, and nervous systems have been altered. Their relative sizes remain constant, but have gained density. Each individual part appears the same, but its composition is different.

"This is not possible. The Unit Fifteen series was created with a specifically tailored genome. They are not supposed to be able to heal themselves or assimilate matter – such as an S2 organ. Even if the genetic structure were unaltered, there is no indication that an Evangelion is capable of replacing its internal organs and structure with such a substance as what now composes Unit Fifteen. The organic substrates encoded in the genome do not approach the complexity of this material, nor its density.

"I can only conclude that this change was brought about by the Third Child himself."

As the First Child spoke about technical aspects of Unit Fifteen's transformation, her voice had returned to normal. Her trembling had stopped. But when the subject inevitably returned to the Third Child...that shaking again. That undefinable tone.

_sex stuff_ a voice whispered in Misato's ear.

"And Asuka?"

Here Ayanami grew still. Her hands, which had been resting one atop the other, clasped. When she responded, her voice was of a slightly higher pitch, the words coming a bit faster than normal.

"Junior Tactical Officer Sohryu concealed herself in the Eva cage while Unit Fifteen was being secured. When I left to establish a connection with the Central Dogma shelters, she came out and began to... to talk to the Eva. To Ikari.

"She became agitated and began to scream, then hit the Eva. With that contact, she lost physical form."

"What does that mean?"

"I cannot be certain of what actually occurred. I have not had the time to study the interior of Unit Fifteen's core. I did not have sensors in place to observe the event, only a security camera. What I saw was Sohryu hit the Eva, and then her empty clothes fall to the floor."

"She just... vanished?"

"Her mass regressed to LCL," Rei clarified. "Which leads me to believe that she was transferred into Unit Fifteen."

"Do you... is there any evidence to back that up, Rei? Or are you guessing?"

"I am taking what I know with what I saw. Either Junior Tactical Officer Sohryu is dead, or Ikari took her into Unit Fifteen. I am inclined to believe the latter."

"Why though? Why would he do that?"

Silence again.

"I do not know."

"Okay, I need you to go tell Lt. Ibuki what you just told me. Then I want Unit Zero to guide Shinji to one of the vetting cages and"

"No," the girl interrupted. "Doctor Akagi will not be able to help Ikari."

"You can't know that, Rei," the Major sighed. "We need everyone working on this to find a solution."

"Commander Ikari has been trying for more than a decade to remove a person from Eva's core, with no success," Rei said. "Doctor Akagi's knowledge of Evangelion physiology excludes specific information about the core, which I am privy to. An informed response to this problem is that there is no way to compel a person to leave the core, if they do not wish to."

"Well, why would he want to stay, Rei?" Misato was standing, pacing. The adrenaline was beginning to flow again.

"To clarify, Shinji's desires may be irrelevant. I was making a direct reference to the Commander's work. It might be that his current state is irrevocably permanent. If he realized this, he might have brought Sohryu in because she was... familiar."

That phrase, 'irrevocably permanent' hung in the air. Misato shivered before it. But...

"I don't think Shinji is that selfish," the Major declared. "He must know something you do not."

Misato could only project an optimism she did not feel.

Because I'm just poking holes in Rei's argument, she thought. Introducing doubt. I don't know anything about this.

The First Child was staring off into space, concentrating. Processing. That was good. Misato wasn't a scientist, but she was used to being surrounded by them. Generally they could answer their own questions if you poked them enough.

"What happened to Sohryu was not an accident," Rei began, "the mechanics of transference are too... _complicated_ to be a natural feature of the core. In that sort of place, however, human will has weight. Ikari might have projected a desire, conscious or unconsciously, which resulted in Sohryu's... state."

"So he drew Asuka in because he was lonely," Misato deadpanned. "Rei, you were in the cage with him before Asuka came back, right? If he were going to do this thing, consciously or not, why not with you? I mean..."

What happened next took Misato a moment to process. There was Rei, sitting with her hands clasped, looking down. Now there was something shiny on her face, something sliding down to her chin, dripping off and leaving little wet dots on her skirt.

Why did he choose Asuka over you? Misato raged at herself. What kind of question is that to ask!

"To be trapped in an Eva's core," the young woman whispered. "To know eternity. If I w-were in his place..."

"Rei, this isn't your fault," the Major said, again at the girl's side. "You.."

"I lied to him," the First Child interrupted, her voice raised, her hands now parted, gripping the edge of the bench. "I told him disabling the Eva with trauma above the entry plug would not harm the pilots. I..."

"You gave him freedom to fight them as angels," Misato interrupted, not too surprised that Shinji had been operating under a false pretense when he did all those awful –- but necessary -– things to the other Eva. "You knew that he couldn't fight people, that he wouldn't knowingly harm another pilot, so you made things easy for him."

"I have never told him something I knew to be false," the young woman replied, absently wiping her face on a sleeve. "It was... an unpleasant thing."

"...that you had to do," the Major finished. "You saved everyone, all right?"

"I used him."

"No no no," Misato had never seen Rei morose. "You protected him."

"I do not believe he sees it that way."

"How can you know that?"

"Because he took Sohryu, and not me."

* * *

Whenever Shinji came to the surface, the view was of the Eva cage in Terminal Dogma. Sometimes Rei was there, and he enjoyed those moments, but her mind was closed. She would not speak with him.

Beneath that view, inside the core, was a slowly regressing chaos. The nucleus of Shinji's self remained distinct, despite the rigors of transferance. But most of his memories were in disarray, spread out, overlapping with Asuka's. When he was not briefly visiting that surface of consciousness he was walking through corridors of memory, eating those that belonged to him and leaving the rest.

Asuka had no self, no animate will. She was, like most human beings, nothing but the sum of her memories. This was a place where that could change, where she could change... but not while their minds were mixed together.

Time passed slowly for Shinji. When he first returned to this world, the red extrusions of the 73rd Angel closing in all around, he had concentrated until the torque of energy that composed his ego-borderline shuddered with the speed of rotation. Without a body, his mind was free to set its own pace, and the world around him had slowed to a crawl.

Now days flashed by. Years. Every bit of stimulus that had ever entered Shinji's head was recollected and absorbed. He could not effectively track the passage of time beyond the core, but at some point he came to the surface to find the view different. Unit Fifteen was standing in the great lake of LCL where the Second Angel was housed. He could dimly make out that creature's profile to the far right. It glowed. There was a boat out on the LCL as well. Most of the time there was a figure on the deck, sometimes facing the white giant to the right, sometimes seeming to look right at him.

She was too far away, and her mind was still closed.

This change of view reminded Shinji that time was still passing in the outside world, and that he was trying re-experience nearly seventeen years of memory. Realizing that, he forced his speed of cognition to its limit, moving through memory ever-faster.

It helped that he was six years back now, where all of his memories were of Japan, and all of Asuka's were in unfamiliar countries, speaking language he could not understand. He learned how to feel this out without having to even touch an unidentified memory, which accelerated his progress further.

He had decided early on to not stop and linger on any particular image. All of these memories would be there when he emerged –- if indeed he could emerge -– to be savored at his own pace. But when Shinji got further back, passed Father abandoning him and a solemn funeral, he found something that nearly unmade him. A recollection of his mother's face.

_Well _she had said _that's good for you._

Suddenly he was very young, but in the familiar surroundings of NERV. He was looking down at something strange, something that looked like an entry plug. Mama's voice was coming over the speakers, and then...

He had to surface for a long time after that. There were no tears to shed, no knees to hug to a chest that wasn't there. No SDAT to balm this feeling. He watched as the figure on the deck worked, as she slept and ate and swam.

And Asuka had said _Your mother is inside Unit One_. But he had already known that, hadn't he?

Time passed. The figure left, and did not come back. Shinji submerged again, eating blindly through one memory after another. There was no comfort to be had in his earliest years – seeing his mother only made him want to run away, or halt inside a snapshot in time and never leave.

But as he worked, he could feel Asuka's own memories reacting to each other. It felt like they were singing. He ate back into his toddler years, before he had learned to use the toilet and walking was still new and uncertain. And something stopped him. Some memory whose owner he could not immediately identify. Within that sequence of events, Shinji Ikari discovered something he had never before suspected.

_There is a car. Big and gleaming. The noise coming from inside its front is confusing. Like words, but all messed up and angry. Dada is in the front seat talking with someone. Shinji is sitting on Mama's lap, staring out the window at the funny-looking trees and hoping Mama is taking him home. The ride on the plane had been scary, he wants to sleep._

_They come to a house, a big white house on a hill covered in green grass. Inside the place smells like cleaner and there are muffins. There is a lady too, a big lady who speaks words Shinji can understand. Her hair is pretty, like a gleam from the sun, and she hugs him like Mama. They show him a room with a crib, but don't make him get in it. The other lady gives Shinji some toys to play with while she talks to Mama. Then Mama says 'Come here, Shinji' and he comes, and Mama's hand is on the other woman's big belly. 'Can you feel it?' Mama asked. Shinji puts his hand next to Mama's and feels something kick in the woman's belly. He laughs._

_'Did you feel it?' Mama asks, making big eyes. 'Who was that, Shin?'_

_'Asuka,' the big woman says, sliding an open palm down her belly. 'We've decided to call her Asuka'._

The Third Child had known Asuka's mother had worked on Eva. She and his own parents had worked for the same organization, toward the same goals. He had never considered that they might have been close.

On a hunch, he left that memory apart from himself, that unsuspected connection. Continued working back, until he was in a crib looking up at a mobile of geometric shapes. Further still - he was breast feeding - then looking up into the face of God, which looked like a much softer Gendo Ikari –- then emerging into a world of cold light -– then a warm soft closeness that was so comforting he had to fight to extract himself from it.

All but that single memory of feeling an unborn Asuka kick were now within him, and Shinji had experienced that memory in total, so it was more of a copy than something he needed to be complete. Asuka's own memories had gravitated toward it as he worked.

The core's structure that contained them was incomplete by design. It was filled with facets, holes, hooks of energy that would compliment a mind emerging from pure memory. To become cognizant here, to rage and suffer in the pain of rebirth, one would become fused with the core. So when the memories gathered around that remnant of Shinji's, when the song of Asuka grew thick, the Third Child spread himself thin, pressing against the inner wall of the core. Shielding what was coming from the devices that would bind it in place, and turn its distension into an engine that could generate an AT Field.

When the space around the remaining memories was completely empty - Shinji remaining only as a fly on the metaphorical wall - a twin to his own torque appeared. Tiny and rotating slowly, the ring of golden energy tasted one of the memories floating around it. Then another. Time passed - the length of each memory playing out in real time, Shinji guessed –- and then the torque folded over itself, forming a figure-eight.

Memory began to drift towards it. Each stuck to the torque and were drawn inside. Shinji wasn't sure what to make of this, only that it would take Asuka too long to process her memories if he didn't show her how to speed up. But there was a matter of the awareness threshold –- when the band of light stopped being a suction for memory and started being a _product_ of it. The shade in Taipei had not been too clear about that, and Shinji couldn't remember his own rebirth all that well. But it looked...

It looked like the memories were being processed all at once. Which shouldn't have been possible. As far as Shinji knew, you couldn't split awareness, just as you couldn't, technically, be in two places at once.

This must be the sub-conscious forming, he surmised as the memories vanished into the torque. This is a precursor to awareness.

The memories had vanished into the figure-eight, which unfolded and became circular again.

_Asuka? _the Third Child sent experimentally. _Can you hear me?_

There was no verbal response, but the torque began to grow in size, golden energy spitting and... no. What in miniature had appeared to be an errant arch of energy was actually a blister of sorts, a track of memory apart from the rest. Shinji had just enough time to realize this before roaring golden fire completely filled his sight. He braced against the core wall, tentatively reached out to touch the conflagration, and...

The white house from the memory he had given her. He was standing at the front door.

He knocked.

A little girl answered. She was wearing a black dress and clutching a stuffed animal. She stared up at him for a moment, then softly closed the door.

He stared straight ahead. Okay.

The door opened again, and this time time it was Asuka as she had appeared on the Over the Rainbow, wearing that yellow sun dress, a blue ribbon was tied around her neck.

"Hey," she said, folding her arms. Looked uncomfortable. "You... you aren't supposed to be here."

"Something is wrong, Asuka" her appearance and casual speech were making him nearly giddy, but his message was still dire. "You're... you have to accept it. Everything. Your entire life. You can't try to exclude memories that are painful. That would make you a different person."

"Do you know who I am?" the girl asked. "Can you guess?"

"I... yes." This particular Asuka. That dress.

"There isn't much of me, but a lot of it is... wrong. I talk with the others, they seem at peace. I am... frustrated. Unhappy. At times I don't want to exist."

"You haven't had a fair existence," Shinji consoled. "But that's in the past, isn't it? The physical defects in your... in _Her_ mind, they're gone now, right?"

"Yes," she replied, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around him.

Oh, so warm...

"Every one of us was affected by that... error. But the rest resolved to forgive themselves, and found peace. I... I'm Her connection to you, all the memories about you. Some of them burn sick and bitter, and I've found... I've found that forgiveness isn't something I can grant myself." Her embrace was suddenly that of a child to a parent.

"Why do you think I'm here?" the Third Child asked, gently disengaging from her. That desperation, so unlike Asuka. Gratifying to him, but also scary.

"I do not know. You might be doing this because someone asked you. Or ordered you. And you are helplessly ethical – you might not have a reason beyond that She was damaged and you could help."

"This isn't something I was ordered to do, and it isn't a... a burden. I want you –- Her - to be right again. This is a selfish thing I'm doing." Shinji blushed, frowned. "I took myself out of it, out of everything, to do this. Time has passed. If an Angel attacked..." He made a helpless gesture. "Well, it seemed worth the risk when I set out. Doesn't matter much now."

"Knowing you are right again, that's all I need. That makes the world easier to live in. I came here because you're... you're important to me, Asuka."

"Do you forgive me?" the image of Asuka asked, and of course that was all she had ever been asking, all she needed to hear.

"Of course I do."

The world drifted away, and the interior of the core appeared again. Asuka hung in the middle, a perfect golden ring within her. Shinji came away from the interior wall, shrinking down next to her.

_Welcome back, Asuka_, he sent warmly. Then he became a single point of light and shattered the core wall.

* * *

The feelings of a corpse. Numb, dark, cold. No movement, no breath, not even a heartbeat.

_Hey_

Scant awareness. Of awareness. No will - just a fuzzy potential. The confusion between sleep and coming awake.

_Shinji. Can you_

"hear me?"

And he could.

"Can you open your eyes?"

He tried. Used that other part of himself

(the AT Field, just call it what it is)

instead of the normal, now absent, musculature. Eyelids parted, too wide too fast, and something trickled thinly from the torn corners. He tried to focus, but could only make out vague shapes floating above him.

"A bit much."

Something pressed against his scalp, his forehead. Hot. Mending. It felt like life.

He closed his eyes, careful this time. The lids twitched as muscle wove into existence under pale flesh, and began to flex for the first time.

"You managed to get yourself nice and scattered, Ikari," the voice said, not unkindly. "It felt like coming back to life for me, and I wasn't even acting as host."

He opened his eyes, this time the muscles actually moving. He focused. Saw red hair, saw blue eyes that seemed to glow with inner light.

Asuka was looking down at him, in a way more terrifying than his half-alive state. The heat on his scalp was her hand, which she pulled away on seeing his pupils respond to light.

She was naked. Different, and naked. Quickly moving from sight, she took his hand in her own. As he tried to get his neck working, she brushed the palm of his hand against her - his fingers shuddered and closed - her breast. Then he was touching her inner thigh, feeling the heat radiating from her. Finally the back of his hand was slowly drawn across the side of her hip.

"I'm... nervous," Asuka said as she returned to his field of vision. "There are so many things I could do, can do. So many choices to make. Some of them are easy - so easy I have to wonder if they're really choices I should be making. Something... something has been wrong with me, for a very long time. I know that, but can't make sense of it, can't feel the wound. I...

"Thanks Shinji," she bent over carefully and kissed him on the lips. "You can be an idiot, but you've... done something right." She pulled out of view. "I'm going away. If I can, I'll leave for Germany tonight. I... well..."

She patted his hand, laid it carefully at his side.

"See you when I see you."

He heard her light steps, bare flesh slapping and sucking against metal. Heard a door open. Stay open.

"You're easy, Ikari," her voice came, so low he could just hear it. "You're an easy choice. I knew that. I know it."

The squeal of hinges, the slam of the door. The turn of a bolt.

He closed his eyes, felt the torn corners of the lids burn, heard his flesh bubble and pop as the injury healed itself.

The side of her breast, the inside of her thigh, the curve of her hip. Each had been smooth, without textural blemish. The Asuka he had known had been scarred in each place, stretch marks lined up, stripes of indented pink. Those were now gone.

He opened his mouth, tasted the air. Felt his heart at last begin to beat.

It had worked. It had really worked.

Shinji Ikari breathed in, and began to laugh.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**

Seven

* * *

The nosebleed began at midday. Rei was performing maintenance on a qutrit registry, did not even notice she was bleeding until a dot of crimson appeared among the delicate instrumentation of an electron localization pump. She quickly brought a hand to her face, winced. A bruise was already forming, seeping outward from her left eye.

No, she thought. Not now.

The First Child cupped her nose and went to the kitchen. Bent over the sink, let blood patter in the steel basin. Closed her eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. All that red.

The headache came next, so sharp and potent it forced a quiet sob from her. Her left eye was being pushed out of its socket, forcing the tear-streaked lids open. The overhead light gleaming off the metal of the sink and counter seemed to pulse with her heartbeat, swelling brighter. There was heat and the distant sound of blood-sticky hands scrabbling in idiot motion. The smell of burning rubber.

She woke up leaning against the base of the sink. Blood was crusted down the front of her uniform blouse. The headache was gone.

Rei pulled herself upright and stripped to the waist, wadding her soiled blouse and putting it in the trash. Noted the time. She had been out for more than ten minutes. Ran a hand lightly across the left side of her face, feeling the shifting, bulging movement of rapid regeneration beneath. She checked the sink, found a ropey chunk of tissue and chips of bone among her clotting blood.

The hemorrhage had been of unprecedented intensity.

The First Child washed her hands and scrubbed the sink basin clean with a long-handled brush and detergent. Returned to her work area. Removed the portion of the qutrit registry that had been contaminated with her blood. Sealed the rest of the computer housing, then lowered the passive AT Field she had placed around it to maintain a clean environment. Next she dialed up a MAGI communication line and authorized a ten minute break in the Judas Protocol. Rei listened to the computer generated confirmation, hung up, waited ten seconds to be sure the instruction had propagated through all the systems of the Geo-Front, then unfurled her AT Field.

* * *

"Please come back."

An unfurnished room lit by a bare LED array. The Third Child lay in the middle, precisely where Rei had deposited him five days ago. A white towel was draped over his waist. The young man appeared to be dead, but Rei could see the motions within him. Could sense things more vital than a heartbeat or brain activity slowly unfolding in the apparent shell.

"An Angel is coming. It will arrive in under four hours. Your presence is required."

She stood over him, looking down. Shinji Ikari did not stir.

"You are the Pilot of Unit One. You are the Third Child. You represent 57% of NERV's total defense capacity."

Still nothing. Either he could not hear her, or was unwilling to respond. Rei slid her utility computer from its pouch at her belt. Keyed a particular audio file. Knelt by the young man, being careful not to touch him, and held the speaker to his ear.

"Miss Katsuragi? This is Kodama Horaki. We understand that you must be very stressed, the reconstruction is all over the news, but we, my sisters and father, just wanted to thank you, for all you are doing for us, for everyone. I hope Shinji and Asuka are safe."

Rei brought the computer up, keyed another file. Placed the speaker by Ikari's ear again.

"Shinji? Horaki. The pretty one. Misato gave me this number. She wouldn't tell me what happened during the Ang" there was a break of low-frequency white noise where the MAGI had censored the communication "...but from what Hikari has told me you tend to get, well, she calls it 'quiet' and 'sad,' after these attacks. How about instead of wasting your time brooding, you call me? Tokyo 3 is under an hour from New Yokohama if I take the Express. We can go see a movie. Hit up an arcade. Anything in the entertainment district. I heard the Kurosawa Theater is putting on some pre-Impact American production. Don't know if that's your thing or not. Oh, and don't worry too much about what happened at the beach. You're a neat guy."

When the Third Child again failed to respond Rei left the room. Cast the utility computer over the railing. Listened to it splash in the LCL below.

Kodama Horaki had a kind voice.

The First Child circled the ship until she arrived on the side opposite, at a hatchway identical to the one leading to Third Child's room. Inside was the body of the former Second Child. The red-head appeared to be recovering at the same rate as Ikari, but was further along in the process. Would probably wake before him. It may have been possible to awaken her as she was, but Rei said nothing, made no appeal, only sat beside the body and placed a hand carefully on one shoulder.

Without Ikari there was no escape from what was coming. But Sohryu possessed something which could mitigate the consequences of that inevitable future. Rei had no time to attempt to wake the red-head, no time to ask or debate for permission.

She flexed her fingers, getting a feel for the energy cycling inside the body before her. Within was a band of sentience, an animate and aware ego-borderline.

The First Child had not dared to touch Ikari or Sohryu until now, but was not surprised by what she found. The golden torque of energy within the former Second Child was remarkably similar to Rei's own fundamental form.

To navigate the band of golden light Rei would have to sample portions of it, dip in at random in order to feel her way around. She would doubtless experience some of Sohryu's memories. The morality of this was a light presence in Rei's mind, nothing at all compared with lying to Ikari. There was no time. It was necessary. She reached out with her AT Field, made contact.

* * *

Steps on the deck outside, and Rei did not move. Only stared at the girl beside her, remembering:  
_  
The sound of rain and passing traffic. She is on her way to school, three blocks from her new apartment. To her left, an elevated maglev track. To her right, a public park, the grass that particular shade of shocking green only visible during a light rain._

_Meow._

_She stops. A car passes by, splashing water at her feet._

_Meeeeeow. The sound is high and shaky. She turns to the wall supporting the maglev. Peers beneath an access ramp. Sees only large public burnable trash and recycling containers._

_Meeow. The cry is not as loud anymore. It is clearly coming from beneath the access ramp. Rei approaches it. Looks between each of the containers. Catches a hint of movement. Something small and dark with rain. It meows at her. A maglev hums by overhead. _  
_  
The waste containers stink. Water drips between the steps of the access ramp overhead. Everything seems so cold and painful._

_Rei hooks her white umbrella between arm and body. Retrieves her cellphone from the outer pouch of her schoolbag. Calls a MAGI voice-recognition line. The kitten meows again. She disables the AT Field sensors for ten minutes. Waits for a pause in street traffic, then parts the recycling containers hemming the creature in place. The sound of screaming metal does not appear to bother the kitten. It appears incapable of doing more than huddling its paws beneath its body for warmth._

_It hisses at her approach, but does not struggle when she lifts it up and places it in her book bag, between the History and Geography texts, making a wadded wet nest of her notes._

_She looks at the time. Class will begin in ten minutes. She looks down at the kitten, which is shuddering harder than ever. She opens her cellphone again, makes another call._

_Ikari picks up on the first ring. "Where?" he asks in a strange tone. It takes a moment for Rei to realize what he means. He probably thinks she is Section Two, calling about a pickup. He thinks an Angel is coming._

_"Ikari?" she begins to identify herself, then stops. Wonders if he can recognize her voice. A spontaneous decision. A flash of curiosity._

_"Oh, Ayanami?" the relief in his voice is clear, and his confusion. She has never called him before._

_"Do you know anything about infant cats?"_

_A pause. Then: "I'm... what?"_

_"I have recovered an injured cat from behind the recycling containers on 14th Street, where it borders the transportation loop."_

_"Well, what..." Ikari goes quiet. Rei listens to the rain. The kitten meows again. She hesitantly runs three fingers across the top of its head. It tries to bite her._

_"Okay," he finally says. "Listen, that isn't far from your apartment, is it? Just go home and... and dry it off I guess. Do you have anything it might eat?"_

_Rei accounts for everything in her fridge and pantry. Nothing seems appropriate for a kitten._

_"Well... broth?" the Third Child suggests. "If you have some instant miso soup, try boiling the fish stock and seeing if it will drink that..."_

_She can hear the school hallways behind his voice. The press of students. Pieces of conversation about tennis club and math homework and a girls' karaoke night drift through the phone as Shinji pauses again._

_"Do you want me to come?" he asks._

_She begins to answer, but he cuts her off. "I'm going to message Kensuke. He should be able to find a vet near your apartment."_

_Ikari pauses long enough for Rei to speak: "I may require your assistance."_

_"Okay, I'm leaving now." A click as the connection is terminated._

_The phone goes back into the book bag. The kitten is shuddering, kneading the mess of notebook paper with its front paws. She begins the walk home._

_Thirty minutes later Shinji Ikari toes open the door to Rei's apartment. He is carrying a plastic bag from a Saifu store in one hand and using the other to clutch a package of cat litter to his chest. His umbrella is hooked around the strap of his schoolbag, and has clearly been there for several blocks. The boy kicks off his shoes and walks in, placing the packages on the counter. His socks leave damp prints on the white kitchen tile. Water drips from his hair. He is panting. Looking at her. She is at the sink, her shirt unbuttoned. One hand holds the kitten against her, its paw hooked on the material joining the cups of her bra. Her other hand is wiping it down with a dish rag soaked in hot water._

The sound a kitten makes when it is wedged behind a dumpster, wet and trembling and certain to die. How she had recognized that sound and reacted to it. The way resources fell into place naturally for the sake of protecting life. Ikari leaning over the counter, hair dripping. The cautious grin that spread on his face when he saw the kitten.

These were all reasons to live.

Rei had peered into Sohryu. Too deeply. Had found what she needed, but something else too. A particular memory: of a dark room, of athletic warmth. A feeling of wholeness. Of being penetrated. Shinji below her, face warped in pleasure, hands clenching the bedspread. She had seen that. Seen through Sohryu's eyes. And that...

It had made her lose interest in life.

But remembering how she had found her kitten, Keicha, had left Rei... fortified.

The First Child got to her feet. Looked down at the former Second Child. Rei had taken what she needed. And paid for it.

The image of Ikari having sex with Junior Tactical Officer Sohryu should have meant nothing to Rei. She had developed a curious reliance on Shinji Ikari. It was something she would clearly have to move past. 


	8. Chapter 8

**The Foregone Conclusion**

**

* * *

**

Eight

* * *

Rei came awake with a head full of half-remembered images. An Angel, hanging so heavy in the sky. The harsh sensory disconnect as her body was incinerated with the rest of Unit Zero. Returning to her fundamental state, a free-floating energy pattern. A mere existence, without want or need or interest. And then...

A line of brown across textured green. It took her a moment to process the image, of a dirt road carved into low countryside. She was standing in short grass at the bank of a river, staring off into the distance, across a plain of gridded pasture.

"Miss Ayanami," came a measured voice. Rei tried to turn, found herself immobile.

A man walked into view, Caucasian and mustachioed, wearing black and white formal attire in the Western style. "Please confirm," he said, extending a white-gloved finger at her. "You are Rei Ayanami, the First Child?"

Yes, Rei thought.

The man smiled, but there was something missing in his expression. The skin pinched up at the corners of his mouth, his lips parting in an upward curve, but something fundamental was lacking. His eyes were empty, pointing at her but not seeming to focus.

He was not human.

It was gratifying to recognize that. Rei had experienced humanity without the benefit of the chemical reactions that guide and shape emotion. The dummy plug cores she had inhabited down the years did not support such subtle mechanisms. Her own 'humanity' was a developed mental undercurrent, an abstract understanding of emotion that gave her subconscious behavioral prompts. It had taken her a long time to develop. And it was telling her this thing standing before her wasn't anywhere close to human. Probably wasn't even self-aware.

"You have been relocated into a memory of Shinji Ikari," the 'man' explained, making an incurious gesture to the world around them, which was darkening as the sun sank behind him, fiery, into the horizon.

Why can I not move?

"You lack a body. You will be provided one."

The man gestured. What seemed to be a dummy plug body appeared beside him, clad in a school uniform. Rei focused on it, and her vision shifted, her facing now reversed. The sinking sun was at her back - she could feel its warmth. Down the river was a bridge and, beyond that, a faint impression in the gathering night - distant mountains.

She looked down at what were now her hands. Flexed her jaw. Took a breath.

"What is this, exactly?" the voice was her own.

"Another memory," the mustachioed man said at her side.

Rei closed the pale hands into fists. This was wrong. This was backwards. The dummy plug body, it had been destroyed along with Unit Zero and... and Rei had wanted it that way. What she had taken from Sohryu, what she had dipped into that horrible girl's golden torque to find, she had wanted that. Not this. Not another... _pretense_.

The First Child turned from the mustachioed creature and walked down to the river. Looked at her reflection in the slowly drifting water, tinted red and orange with the setting sun. What Rei saw was not a dummy plug. Not exactly. It was a shell, yes, but not a mashup of Lilith meta-genes and human DNA. Ikari had no way of knowing those particulars. And it wasn't a simple visual replica of a dummy plug, either. There was a tinge of perfection to Rei's face she found found... curious. Her features were slightly more Asian, the lines defining her eyebrows and hairline impossibly perfect.

This body, it must be how Ikari saw her.

She looked away. This was... relevant to her. These differences between what her actual appearance had been and what Ikari chose to remember. It was distracting. Interesting.

An interest she could not afford. There was still no comfort in this form. Like the dummy plug, it wasn't really her. This idealized body was only a hindrance, something to overcome. She had to get to work. But first...

"Why am I here?" she asked, turning to the mustachioed creature.

"Your natural environment has been upset by Shinji Ikari's attempts to orient himself to this world. I was configured to transfer you into a spatial matrix out-of-phase with your prime reality, based upon one of his memories, experienced between age six and thirteen, to guard against likely catastrophe."

"Elaborate," she addressed the bizarre... what? Memory program? Ego-fragment?

The 'man' spread its hands in what Rei supposed would normally pass for a gesture of apology. "I am sorry, my responses are limited. I am only to acclimate and inform you to and of your situation, and ask that you remain here until such time as the situation outside has stabilized."

Rei flexed her AT Field. The fabric of this so-called 'spatial matrix' was yielding. Under pressure it stretched thin enough to vibrate with the variable pressure and forces of the world it was supposedly 'out-of-phase' with, gradually revealing a view of Terminal Dogma. The ship she had established residence on and the vast orange-yellow reservoir were visible with a clarity that made the reality Rei now occupied seem bland and lifeless. In addition to those things and Lillith - in profile from Rei's viewing angle - there were strange hints of motion as well, lines of solid white weaving through other, probing bands of faded gray. These phantasmal motions were such that Rei could not judge perspective. What she was seeing could be playing out across the boundary between the space she occupied and the 'prime reality,' a sort of static discharge brought on by some differential of physic between false and real worlds. Either that, or she was witnessing a conflict of Angelic proportions, the lines of white being condensation from thermal weaponry or the result of faster-than-sound travel. But she could sense the radiant energies of Lilith and Adam through the window, and detected none of the chaos and conflict in either energy signature that usually attended an Angel attack.

The strange motions were either artifacts of stretching reality to the breaking point and of no real consequence, or a fight between Ikari and... something else, something that was out of phase with her point of view - perhaps filtered by the material of the spatial membrane itself. Either way, she could probably leave this place with little difficulty. The thought of Ikari engaging an Angel without the aide of an Eva did not trouble Rei. From what she had been able to gauge of the Third Child's new form...

She turned away from the window, faced the mustachioed creature in the shape of a man.

"Whatever you are," she nodded to the program. "Tell Ikari that I do not wish to be disturbed. I will take my leave of this place, but in my own time."

"Acknowledged," the program made a slight bow, and blinked out of existence.

* * *

Rei Ayanami. Born long ago in the laboratories of Gendo Ikari, fomenting as a subtle energy matrix connecting samples of Lilith-flesh being used in experiments. Drifting on the White Giant's AT Field, the same field that had ushered earliest life onto the surface of an empty and molten world nearly four billion years before.

Her existence had been without want or care or interest, more potential than actual life. Only by fluke had she been channeled into flesh, the empty mind of a nascent dummy plug naturally attracting her. That body had closed the circuit of Rei's potential. Brought awareness.

At a time when the Instrumentality of Man Project was still being finalized, when SEELE's document of metaphysical manifest destiny was still being constructed far off in the realm of pure abstraction, Rei had achieved what would be that document's core tenant. Through the dummy plug body, she had achieved _complementation_.

Flesh tethered her to the world.

But now, there were no dummy plugs left to inhabit. The so-called second generation dummy plugs were just unadulterated Lillith-matter that functioned as a bridge between an Eva's brain and body. There was nothing of Rei in any of them. So.

So she would just have to make a body of her own. Replicate the evolution of Ikari and Sohryu. Become something that seemed to be flesh only by choice, rather than necessity. Something that did not require a body to be truly alive.

In absence of any genetic sample, the Third and former Second Children had been able to return to human form, or something with all the outward appearances of human form. Rei had touched Sohryu's core of self, found what was directing the red-head's slow regeneration, and copied it. There was no memory in it, just a dense knot of energy with a purpose Rei could only guess at. If she was lucky, it was a subconscious process that would reconstruct her appearance based on her own memories. If she was unlucky, then the energy would just be an encoding of Sohryu's DNA. If that were the case, Rei would have to learn to control. Rewrite it. Until her appearance was acceptably human and distinct from the former Second Child.

Rei had taken a horrible but necessary risk in detonating Unit Zero. She had never been able to function without a body before, never been able to summon the drive to do anything in her primal form but simply exist. She had hoped that two years of uninterrupted life in an approximately human form would have altered that, but it appeared that Ikari was owed a debt for sequestering Rei in this artificial world and, somehow, anchoring her incorporeal form to it.

* * *

The First Child walked out onto the river's surface and began to strip.

The river was halted and made solid with a thought. The sun dripped up from the horizon until it was at an angle appropriate for viewing her reflection. This memory wasn't hers, but it was easy to manipulate. There was feedback though, hints of context, thoughts that smelled like Ikari.

As she removed her blouse, Rei focused on the information that was seeping into her mind.

In the distance, on the left side of the river, were two blurred figures. The Oyoji brothers. Bullies. They didn't come to the river because their little sister had nearly drowned there last year, and their mother would punish them if she found out they were anywhere near it. Shinji had chosen this location in order to avoid them, even though the water scared him - he did not yet know how to swim, after all.

An older man was coming up the path where Rei had first appeared. That was teacher Ikojira, coming to tell Shinji that it was time to return to his studies. Rei unclasped the dress uniform and let it fall to her feet, where it sank into the water. The old man was looking out across the river, right at her, but gave no sign that he was actually seeing the nearly-naked girl standing solidly on the water's surface.

Just memories. Just ghosts, Rei thought as she stripped off the last of her underwear. There was nothing dynamic here. Nothing to threaten her.

Fully nude, Rei studied her reflection. Knelt on the balls of her feet, legs apart, in order to take in the fine details, knowing it was a mistake. Her breasts hung heavy, a full cup size larger than those of a dummy plug body. Her navel was half an inch higher, and below that the specifics of her sex had been generalized, all neat lines and ringed with short, curly blue hairs.

This was the image Ikari had of her. Her chest, between her legs... he had imagined those things. Imagined her as human.

How old was this memory? A remnant of their first meeting? A flash of reflexive, hormonal guesswork? Certainly it wasn't an eidetic re-creation of that moment so long ago when he had fallen on her bare form, a hand cupping her breast.

Had he ever conjured this image, knowing the truth? That she was a different sort of being? Shinji, who was forced into Eva and told that Angels were the enemy, unthinking and antithetical to humanity? Shinji, who had been touched by Kaworu Nagisa, and then made to kill him?

"Do what you must, while you can," she spoke to her reflection, expression growing hard. "Ask him after."

She ripped the kernel of Sohryu free of her AT Field, shoved it deep into her own core of self. And tried to evolve.

* * *

Shinji Ikari stood on the bridge of the NERV ship, shoveling uncooked rice into his mouth with his one remaining hand.

He was wearing a brown leather jacket, the left side badly burnt where his arm was missing, loose white insulation visible at the neckline. His pants were heavy denim and duct-taped at the ankle, fusing the leg openings with the trunk of two solid, black boots. The boots did not bend with his feet, and clunking around with them was becoming a source of aggravation.

His arm had been subtracted away from his body in a half-circle injury that started at his neck and extend just below where the armpit should have been. Clavicle and ribs were visible among blackened flesh, as well as a complex knot of muscle that had to be his heart, or the half of it that remained. The Third Child ground the dry rice in his mouth and paced, seemingly heedless of the injury. His formerly brown hair had flecks of ashy white running through it.

He ground the rice into a thick paste and swallowed it. As he did, the morbid view of exposed bone and organs at his left side vanished, a shiny blackness seeping along the limits of the injury and flowing inward, covering the entire wound. Shinji took another handful of rice from the large storage bin he had discovered on the bridge, tilted his head back, and let the kernels slide from hand into mouth. Began again to chew.

The ship's deck had been turned into a workshop. The Third Child wandered among the steel workbenches, spying vaguely familiar machinery and notes of inscrutable purpose written in Ayanami's dense, mechanical hand. There was a neatly made-up futon at the ship's bow. From the bedding, Shinji's gaze was pulled upward, to the disturbing remains of the White Giant, which was almost close enough for someone standing on the futon to touch. It wasn't dead yet, he knew that, but the Second Angel, what his Father had called "Lillith," had greatly decayed. The limbs were narrower, the crucified arms sagging in steep, joint-less curves that nearly broke the surface of the LCL lake. The mask was still in place, but there was a great emptiness spreading beneath it that extended down the neck and into the chest, creating the impression that the White Giant was screaming. The trunk of its body had stretched downward, until its legs and groin were invisible beneath the LCL.

Shinji swallowed the second mouthful of rice. The blackness at his right side surged out in a shiny onyx cone, which sprouted spikes across its surface, which in turn were quickly covered in barbs. The tip of the cone pulled back and up as this controlled fractal regression continued, folding back on itself until it fused with the uppermost edge of the injury, forming a solid knob of black. A shoulder.

The Third Child returned to the container, sitting on the deck against one of the workbenches, and scooped three handfuls into his mouth. Enough of this already. He swallowed the whole thing in one painful gulp. Started to choke, but kept on pushing it down. Probably would have died if he had still needed to breath. Spikes emerged from the end of his new shoulder, stretching down, expanding outward in increasingly smaller protrusions. These formed a thick stump approximating an upper arm before new, large spike emerged from the tip of that and formed the lower arm. From there the black thing that was becoming his arm lengthened again, extruded five stubby stalks at its lowest point. Then its surface began to twist, tightening the thick tendril's surface along human muscle lines, along points of articulation at the elbow and wrist and fingers. And then... flesh. The shiny black vanished, and Shinji had both his arms again. The Third Child flexed the new fingers experimentally and sighed.

He took the rice container back to the bridge, which had been converted into a sort of kitchen, and placed it beneath the cupboard that had been built against the ship's steering column. Then he stretched his new arm out, carefully popping the joints of each finger in turn, and yawned. He had been out for six weeks and was already tired again. Didn't feel right.

The Third Child walked back to the deck of the ship, took in a lung-full of sour air, thick with ionized LCL, and summoned the Shrike. The creature appeared in its mustachioed form, holding a menu for a restaurant that did not exist in Shinji's prime reality under one arm.

"Bring her back," Shinji whispered, his voice hoarse.

"Incorporeal entity Rei Ayanami the First Child," the Shrike issued in tedious mechanical cadence, "stated: _I do not wish to be disturbed. I will take my leave of this place, but in my own time._" The last was said in a quiet but strong feminine voice that Shinji easily recognized.

He clucked his tongue, absently ripped up the steel railing that lined the deck. Maintaining that false world was putting a serious strain on his energy reserves. It was all managed by the Shrike, but Shinji was still the one powering it. The designed decoherence of matter from an established system, and the fight with the three angels that had congealed into existence the moment Shinji had woken up, had left him so drained that he had needed a few mouthfuls of rice - more specifically, the biochemical energy inside the rice - to fuel his arm's regeneration.

He dismissed the Shrike and wandered down the length of the ship, stopping at each hatchway in turn to explore what was inside. The first room smelled of Asuka - doubtless where she had been left to recover.

The second hatchway opened to a narrow stairwell that proceeded downward into a darkness that smelled of gelled oil and faint radioactivity. He did not venture past the threshold.

Behind the third hatch was a shower room.

Shinji wandered in, hands in his jacket pockets, acting casual for nobody. The shower was cramped, the water basin coming up to Shinji's waist, but the water ran, and ran hot. He stared down past his feet for a moment, saw the device that had been strapped down in the berth that was converting LCL into water, and decided to leave the shower running for the moment. He left the hatch open so the steam would flow out and not fog up the full length mirror that had been bolted to the wall of a recessed alcove beside the shower. Shinji stared at his reflection, and saw that his mouth was moving. He had been muttering aloud, probably since waking up. It was a habit he had picked up during his time outside the world - which by this reality's reckoning had lasted no more than five minutes, but had been nearly two years, subjectively, for him. Two years of wandering among the ruins of Taipei, on an alternate world where Adam had been allowed to supplant Lillith without any contest. Two years of dodging human 'Angels,' indestructible and inscrutable creatures that stalked those ruins and sought to tear him apart until every cell in his body was ruptured. Two years alone, with only the idiot Shrike and an enigmatic shade for company. Little surprise he was having trouble stopping the movement of his lips, even now.

His shape was wrong, maybe an inch higher than it had been, slightly broader and, Shinji suspected, more muscular. Didn't know for sure. Was about to find out.

He had spent a solid year in this gear - after his internal processes had grown so efficient as to not produce any waste but heat and sweat, and he had discovered the ease of flight. The changes wrought from breaching the dimensional barrier had advanced beyond even that, to the point the cold of the upper stratosphere only touched him if he chose to let it. He had kept the outfit because, well, no point in discarding it. What was he going to do, zip around that alternate Earth's crumbling upper atmosphere naked?

He unzipped the jacket and peeled it off. The accompanying sound was like shucking an orange. The shirt beneath had mostly dissolved and fused with the jacket's lining, and split down the middle to come away with it. The flesh beneath was fishbelly white and, at the chest, covered in colorless, curly hairs. Dirt ribboned across his neck and upper chest - the accumulation of the dust that had slid in from the neckline. Below that...

Shinji laughed, dry and hoarse as his earlier command to the Shrike. He did not have a six pack. On this world, or any other. The person in the mirror looked like a... what? a gymnast? with Shinji Ikari's head pasted on. Too funny. It took the laughter two minutes and thirty-eight seconds to stop, during which he accidentally put a hand through the outer bulkhead.

The boots came off next. He cut them away with a part of the pants, and regarded the gnarled mess of hardened kerotine that had been allowed to grow down there. He felt no physical discomfort, but... it looked like it should hurt. A surgical motion with one hand, guiding a focused fold of AT Field, and the horrifying nest of toenails were cut off as easily as the boots had been. Separated from his body, the mess began to dissolve in a rising cloud of vanishing black flakes. His discarded jacket and shirt were likewise vanishing.

It might have been easier, Shinji reflected, to have just accepted the form Ayanami's expectations had impressed on his recovering body. To set to replicating the minutia of his waveform, including his filthy clothes and weathered flesh... it had been a subconscious decision, and one the Third Child now regretted. It had probably lengthened his recovery time by a day, and would take additional effort to correct, in order to appear like a 17-year-old.

He kicked his pants off and went back to the mirror, sighing at the muscle tone in his legs. "What happensz when your body getsz ussssed to eating ssssunlight," he rasped in disgust. Maybe he could hide the legs. Maybe. His upper body would require long-sleeved shirts and... well, padding would probably be pushing it. He had never been fat, per se, but still. Six-pack... He giggled again.

The extra inch of height - now three quarters of an inch with the boots off. Would that have to go too? Did people even notice such things? He could shorten the bones in his upper and lower legs but... it was his inch, dammit. Slowly adding it to his original height over the course of a few months? He didn't need any other latent processes eating into his energy reserve.

The skin would have to change, of course. His face was weathered and sun-tanned, but every other part of him was as white as Ayanami.

Ayanami...

* * *

Call it a creeping joy. Get stuck in a world were existence is plan following plan, where every action has to be toward an overarching goal. See how long it takes you to forget about joy and all the other ancillary aspects of life that make it worth living in absence of constant mortal peril. That was the mindset that had been carved into Shinji's mind in daggers of white-hot pain. For the first several weeks on that alternate Earth, among the ruins of Taipei, he had lacked the will to continue living. Shinji had been certain that the Angel had continued its attack in his absence, not yet understanding that the dimension he occupied had been altered so its flow of time was nearly perpendicular to that of his prime reality. Even as the human Angels hunted him down and tore his undying body apart again and again, past the agony that should have muted anything so delicate as emotion, Shinji Ikari had mourned for his world which, he had been certain, was even then being destroyed in a Third Impact.

Even when the Shrike's owner, that insubstantial shade, had appeared on the twenty-sixth day to explain things to Shinji, to express disappointment on his progress and to promise him that it was indeed possible to return to his prime reality, something in the Third Child's mind was gone. Burnt out. Even as he was given cause for hope, Shinji had felt nothing, only a mechanical orientation to the overarching goal of gaining power, learning about his new ill-defined existence, and eventually escaping back to his own world.

Call it coming back to life. Shinji, looking at himself in the mirror, suddenly realizing who and where he was. Suddenly realizing that Ayanami and Misato were alive, that he would see them soon. That Asuka was gone, but different - delivered from her madness by his own hand!

Something flared bright in the pale, naked young man. Energy was oozing into him - the heat and potential from the steam - the air growing cold. Bits of frost fell to the ground as the steam flash-froze. With a quick motion, Shinji sculpted out the meat of his throat, leaving only his spinal column intact. His atrophied vocal cords were ripped away to dissolve in a cloud of black flakes, and before a single fount of blood could spray from severed vein and arterial cords, the flesh was whole again.

"I'm home," Shinji pronounced to the frost-edged mirror, his voice deep, but clear.

_Take a step back, out of the shower room and away from the churning mass of quantum potential and pale skin. Back further, until the NERV ship is a mote of gray among the yellow-orange of the LCL reservior. Now drift up, through layers of titanium support structure, past miles and miles of fiber-optic cable. Up to the inhabited levels of the Geo-Front. Center on one recently-promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Katsuragi, sitting at a huge desk, staring at a hologram suspended in the air - a proposed defense system. Now watch as she cocks an ear, looks away from the floating image and Doctor Akagi, who is explaining its technical specifics._

_The psychic assertion touches everyone known to Shinji Ikari. A whisper drifting across the ether. First: "I'm home," and then, with greater force: "I'm back!"_

_Misato Katsuragi begins to cry. Cannot explain why. Ends the meeting early. Ritsuko Akagi feels it as well, though nowhere near as strongly, and puts it down to a fault in the hologram projector's optical intensity._

_Most of Tokyo 3 feels something. _

_The voice comes to Rei Ayanami, but she could no longer make sense of it, her soul a golden torque twisted into a figure-eight. _

_It comes to Gendo Ikari as he sits in conference with the organization formerly known as SEELE, but he does not recognize it; is only suddenly reminded of Yui and how he has failed her. _

_It comes to Maya Ibuki as a burst of sudden happiness. _

_It comes to Touji Suzahara and Kensuke Aida, but only barely - estrangement muting the effect. They feel a warmth, and memories of Shinji skirt on the edge of their awareness - but that is all._

_The voice comes to a young woman in New Yokohama, and fills her with frustrated uncertainty and the unknown._

_And the voice comes to a hidden form, wedged between the support struts in the cargo hold of a 797 on an express flight from New York to Berlin. Asuka smiles, and tries to send a response, but she is not yet strong enough to make her voice heard over such distance._

The world was bleeding. Shinji could feel Lillith's morphogenetic field failing, could feel the Quiet End approach. Everything to this point had been easy. Living as a human, piloting Eva, even his time on the alternate Earth, flailing at the dimensional boundary in a desperate bid to return home.

He had trusted others. Had assumed that they knew what was right, and how best to proceed. On the battlefield he had trusted his own instincts, but beyond that? Living had been as easy as following orders and mimicking the people around him.

But there was no more time for that. No more time for idle existence. The Angels would continue to come, but they were not the primary threat. Shinji could see that now. Adam's competing field would still outlast that of Lillith, and then the Quiet End would fall. The same fate that had befallen the alternate Earth.

No one knew how to stop it. None but he and Asuka, and perhaps Rei, could even perceive the problem directly. So the duty fell to them.

Shinji came away from the mirror. Stepped into the shower. Let his mind drift.

How to save the world?


	9. Chapter 9

**The Foregone Conclusion**

* * *

Nine

* * *

Shinji spent most of a day working at one of the terminals Ayanami had set up on the ship's bow, trying to prize as much information from it as possible. It was difficult at first, even with the First Child's unlimited clearance. He wasn't really familiar with the MAGI system, the usage of which relied entirely on text-based commands. The entry plug interface he was used to using was simpler. More visual.

The Shrike was no help, as expected. In its most minor form it had some capacity for independent thought and machine interface, but it was unfamiliar with the way this world was shaped, and had gone dormant in order to test and re-program itself. Shinji had not expected much from the thing in the first place. It was mostly good for mechanically executing complicated quantum routines, like tunneling between realities and shunting energy from Shinji to maintain the false world Ayanami had yet to emerge from.

So Shinji had to rely on what he had learned in school and every half-seen and inattentively gained bit of information he had visually experienced since coming to NERV. Revisiting every moment when he had seen a computer screen, or seen someone moving their hands over a keyboard, and trying to gain some kind of insight.

He got a few of the navigation commands from that. Enough to find the files that could teach him the rest. From there it was easy. Each division of NERV had its own partition, and they were all organized in the same way. In no time at all, Shinji had access to the daily and weekly reports.

The news was... bad.

* * *

NERV was down both 'senior' pilots, himself and Ayanami, and one 'junior' pilot, a girl named Sakamoto. That left nine pilots, all junior. Of those, only two had seen combat prior to the 74th Angel's attack, and only one of _those_ had access to a functional Eva.

Shinji sidetracked, looking up information on the junior pilot that had been listed as a casualty. Ai Sakamoto, the Seventh Child. Fourteen years old. Had been assigned to Unit Six.

The Third Child closed his eyes. Remembered a white Eva in the Administrative Park, eating the trees, splintered bone points where it hands should have been. He remembered breaking its neck with the Unit Fifteen, and then having to yank the white head off altogether, to stop it.

Ayanami had told him inflicting damage above the entry plug would not harm the pilots of the berserk Eva. He should have known better. And the truth was - the truth Shinji could no longer deny because he couldn't forget anything, anymore, _ever_ - that he _had_ known. He had piloted Eva for three years, and experienced all the psychosomatic pain and damage that entailed - including bruises that wrapped around his neck and face and sometimes dimmed his sight...

But he had focused in on Ayanami's lie, told himself that she knew better because she was actually _building Eva_, and then gone out and...

The serious-looking girl in the Seventh Child dossier, a narrow face framed with long hair cut in a bowl-fringe at her forehead. He had _snapped her neck_ and then _torn her head off_. And now she was listed as a resident of Third Cranial Nerve, where they kept long-term patients. Her current status was listed as 'PGC - 5, permanent coma.'

Ai Sakamoto. He owed her, but. Now was not the time for this. He... There was still a lot he needed to know. It... wouldn't do to get sidetracked for long.

Six weeks had passed since the 74th Angel attack. Unit Zero and Ayanami had destroyed it via self-detonation. The First Child was credited with saving the life of two of the six junior pilots that had deployed with her.

Seven Evangelions deployed at the same time, and Ayanami still had to kamikaze the thing. Either that Angel had been categorically stronger than every one that had proceeded it, or the junior pilots were _incredibly_ inept. That was something else to look into. Shinji was the only senior pilot left with an active Evangelion, and he hadn't gone into battle without competent support since the first sortie with the 5th Angel. He did not much care for the idea of deploying alone, or with someone who might accidentally shoot him.

And Shinji was not taking the fight to the Angels without Eva. For one thing, his power-set was not going to be useful in every encounter. For another, the three Angels that had appeared in Terminal Dogma when he woken up - the three he had broken in minutes, losing only an arm in the process - had been, really, one Angel in sum. The energy of one Angel, anyway, split between three cores and three nascent imperatives that had hardly any time to understand their surroundings and test their potentials.

But a single Angel that had enough time to recognize its self and purpose? Shinji was not certain he could fight such a thing. He could understand them a little better - he had entered the other world much as the Angels entered into this one, after all - but they were a brute force. The S2 engine provided them a direct tap into Adam's morphogenetic field - Shinji had no equivalent source of cosmic energy, nor did he want one. The shade that had given him the Shrike had warned him about such things, that tapping into the Earth's gravitational field or either of the morphogenetic fields - anything that would give him a constant and perpetual source of energy - would be a very bad idea.

And even if he could slay the coming Angels with his bare hands, would it be worth it? Defeating them was now, ultimately, a secondary concern. The Quiet End, that was the real threat. And to combat it, Shinji needed more than he was. He needed people to trust him. He needed resources. He needed... everyone. Everything. The Quiet End was the death of Lillith, a creature billions of years old, and Shinji was not so stupid as to imagine that was something he could contain on his own. This was the ultimate in _human_ endeavor, and so to everyone that was a part of it, excepting Ayanami and maybe father, it would be best for Shinji Ikari to remain _human_.

Back to the screen.

Asuka was officially listed as M.I.A., and Section Two was carrying out an investigation into her disappearance. There was a timeline of the incident on the beach and a speculative psych profile of Asuka on the Section Two partitions, along with communication records, work reports, interviews with her co-workers, and a complete list of the contents of her room. Nothing recent though. It appeared that Asuka had been able to escape Terminal Dogma without leaving any trace of her presence.

Section Two had recommended that NERV announce the former Second Child as a criminal defector, based on her extensive knowledge of Evangelion and the Geo-Front defense systems, and get the UN involved in 'recouping' her. Shinji would have to make sure that recommendation was not acted upon. One last act of... 'devotion' might be pushing it, but that was the general idea. Even before Asuka's mind had gone bad, she had been a... difficult friend. But yeah, a friend, for sure. Of the three original children, she had been hurt the most. She deserved... whatever it was that she wanted.

The Geo-Front was on high-alert. This was expected, since it had been six weeks without an Angel, and the longest recorded interval between Angels after the 3rd was six weeks and four days. NERV was unaware that Shinji had killed three Angels down here in the LCL lake, and that the curdling pressure of Adam and Lillith's competing morphogenetic fields was now so low as to be practically non-existent. They had another three weeks without an Angel, easy, and that was assuming Ayanami and him couldn't figure out a way to maybe keep the things from ever congealing into being in the first place.

Clearly there was much to do, but not just yet. There were several active monitoring systems in place that covered Central Dogma and everything above it, as well as a large swath of earth beneath Terminal Dogma. Shinji was effectively encircled, and it was certain that appearing within the limits of any of those systems would set them off.

The Judas Protocol was the trickiest of the systems, from what he could figure. It had been created in anticipation of other human-sized Angels like Kaworu, and allowed the MAGI to have total awareness of anomalous macro-spatial disturbances within the Geo-Front. This was tricky, in that Shinji was entirely unsure what exactly a _macro-spatial disturbance _was. An observable effect of an AT Field, apparently, but would it pick him up as well?

There were a lot of secondary criteria to the program as well, to do with the movement of individuals within the Geo-Front over long periods of time. The specifics were too technical for Shinji to follow. He tried looking at the system directly, but there was nothing there to learn off of, just a bunch of program files that were being constantly 'access-locked' by the MAGI. Ayanami could request gaps in Judas Protocol monitoring, but only by voice command.

Heading to Central Dogma on foot was a problem too. Like Asuka, Shinji was officially M.I.A., and his clearance had been revoked. Suddenly appearing in a restricted area while NERV was on high-alert would probably warrant an Angel-level security response, like self-detonation of the level he happened to be on. Misato had also mentioned, in the past, a self-destruct program controlled directly by the MAGI that could destroy all of HQ if certain conditions were met.

So, probably best to stay in Terminal Dogma for the time being, until either the Shrike went active again and was able to QT him out, or Ayanami returned and was able to at least fix the clearance issue. Until then...

* * *

The ship's PA system control was installed up on the bridge and, by some miracle, compatible with Shinji's music player, the one he had acquired in the broken city of Taipei.

The other world had been big on compact disks. Shinji could not understand why. SDAT were smaller, you could fit more songs on them, and you didn't have to worry about scratching them up. He had amassed a large collection of CDs in the other world, mostly songs that, as far as he knew, had no analog in the real world, and was hoping to get them transferred to SDAT at some point.

He loaded up four CDs into the player, set it on Repeat, and then cranked the PA system up until the LCL around the ship _danced_. Then he leapt twenty feet to the deck below, and settled down at Ayanami's terminal. Opened up the message system. Typed out the following:

_Misato. I'm back. Stuck in Terminal Dogma, in the lake. Ayanami is still out of touch. Can you send someone down here, or restore my clearance? _  
_-Shinji_

Short and simple. He had written her and everyone else dozens of letters in the other world. Long, rambling, embarrassing things that they would never, ever see. He was proud of this simple note to Misato. It was like he hadn't been gone for any length of time, at all. Well, except for him calling her by name, and not by rank.

She would probably assume it was a trick, either some aspect of a bizarre Angel attack, or someone trying to upset her. That would not stop her from tracing the message - could you do that? Shinji didn't know - and sending someone into Terminal Dogma to verify that, yes, there was a boy that matched Shinji Ikari's general description on the ship stationed in LCL Retention Reservoir, and if he was an Angel seeking to fuse with the White Giant, Third Impact would have already happened.

But until then, Shinji had his music. Mindless techno. The sensation of his body vibrating with the heavy beat was relaxing, and prompted a thoughtless, coma-like state, which was as close as he got to sleep these days.

As the blankness began to overtake him, Shinji shifted all his remaining energy to the false world Ayanami was still occupying. The Shrike remained dormant, but had left behind a set of hollistic controls Shinji could use to dial up the subjective temporal experience in the false world. When that world had been created, the passage of time had been two to one, relative to the real world. Now, dialed up, it was ten to one. The energy commitment involved, plus the vibrations from the music, left Shinji little more than a dessicated husk of inexplicably associated matter, and pleasingly indifferent to the passage of time.

* * *

The false world vanished, and the energy that had been maintaining it flooding back into the Third Child. The blankness melted away and Shinji was on his feet, looking around and searching, searching.

"Ayanami?" he called, suddenly anxious. Ayanami. He was going to see Ayanami. And then Misato, and father, and the rest.

Nothing on the bow. He kicked up and hovered perhaps sixty feet above the deck. The red-orange lake was empty too, save for the crumbling remains of Unit Fifteen and one of the three Angels, a super-dense type.

"Ayanami!" the place where she had been was gone. And she should have been pushed out, back into the real world. This was wrong...

He landed back on the bridge and picked the dormant Shrike up off the work desk. Shook it. "Wake up!" he shouted at the thing. "Where is she?"

A sound. Distant, faint, furtive. He dropped the Shrike. Kicked off the deck again, this time falling in a lazy arc toward the back of the ship.

There. On the side-deck. A bent white leg. She had been too close to the ship's side for him to see the first time. Shinji pushed off of nothing, changing the direction of his fall. Landed lightly on the side-deck.

And for two heartbeats, all he could do was stare.

It was Ayanami. It had to be. The skin was the right color, and nothing else could have come out of that false world. It had been for her, and her alone. He wished for a watch. Wished he could figure exactly how much subjective time had passed for her.

Her body was undeniably Angelic: The needles of bone emerging, seemingly at random, from her stomach, forehead, and left arm; the small, red, perfectly spherical cysts that pocked her body like freckles; the faint sound that she appeared to produce involuntarily, a faint hum that came from nowhere - it sounded like a choir, playing a long way off.

One leaking, sunken red eye peered out from beneath bone needles. She saw him and immediately rolled away, trying to kick down the side-deck with her one good leg, pulling herself forward inch by inch with a faint suggestion of an AT field.

Shinji went to her. It took some effort. His mind was in lock-down, trying to process what he was seeing.

The Shrike. The damn Shrike. It was supposed to have given her a memory. Not the best solution, maybe, but the only one Shinji could think of. The Shrike did not know how human beings were put together, much as it did not intuitively understand the shape of the real world, and Shinji's mind was the only one it could pull information from. A memory of Ayanami. She was supposed to be in that. She was supposed to be _safe_!

He pushed down on Ayanami's body, stopping her inching progress. The flesh under his hand was soft and gave under the slightest pressure. It felt exactly like the second-generation dummy plug the two of them had stripped off of Unit Fifteen's entry plug before launching against the 73rd.

"Nu, du. Luk," she clicked out, rolling into a fetal position, hiding her face.

"What is this?" he said, quiet and desperate. "What happened, Ayanami?"

The mass shuddered. The points of bone were tearing up the ship deck. But Ayanami was silent.

So he looked into her. Searched out her core of self. And recoiled at what he found.

She was. The way she was shaped. The way _she was put together_. It was like him. Only it had gone wrong.

His soul was a golden torque. The thing within Rei resembled loosely looped barbed wire, spurs of light constantly branching off the spiralling main body.

How was that possible? No. No. Didn't matter. What did matter was... this was his thing. This was his fault. This. He was the only one that could do anything about this. He had to fix it, somehow.

"I'm g-going to help you," he said to the shuddering mass. "Just. I'm s-sorry. Please, I need you to trust me. I'll make this right."

Not that she was really capable of resisting.

* * *

Ayanami was spread too thin, her mind barely aware, so it was quite easy to pull her along with him. Her AT Field pulsed faintly, but did not seek to counter or erode his own field. Shinji flew at a slow pace just over the surface of the lake, leaving a trail of frozen LCL as he tried to shore up his energy reserves, which were still ridiculously low.

Terminal Dogma had the lowest ambient energy footprint of any environment Shinji had ever been in. The lights were cold, the air was empty - there was hardly anything to absorb. On top of that, Shinji was so utterly furious with himself that he could not do any of the little tricks he had learned to produce energy in such a situation.

Off the lake, they passed through the so-called Heaven's Gate and into the bone-white central chamber. Shinji flew up and to the left, rounding the wall just as soon as he could, and nearly collapsed onto an Eva cage platform.

A Unit Fifteen towered over them, silent and dark and dead. Shinji settled Ayanami into place, carefully ensuring that her mass was wedged safely against the railing.

Then he turned and flew at the Eva, smashing into its chest, cursing and screaming and _hating_ because Ayanami was _deformed_ and it was _his fault_ and things were supposed to easier, dammit! He could fall into the sky and cure black madness and survive having half his heart burned away, but somehow he couldn't manage something as simple as pulling a friend out of the line of fire!

This thing that had happened to him. The cost kept growing. The Seventh Child was in a coma. Rei had died, and was now in a state that might be worse than death. His fault his fault _his fault!_

He shattered the bone-like armor and peeled away skin, ruining his hands several times in the process. He tore at the dead Eva until its core was revealed. The red sphere was still pristine, existing apart from life and death. Its interior was a universe unto itself.

"Right," Shinji snarled, then realized he had been muttering that word since leaving the ship. He placed a hand over his mouth as he floated back to the platform. Waited until his lips stopped moving. Bent by Ayanami, pulled the hand away, and said: "What I'm about to do, I'm sorry about it. But if I don't do it, you... you're going to die. I don't know how this happened, and I hope one day you can forgive me for it, but I'm going to make it right right right right..." he clamped a hand back over his mouth.

He could do this. He had to do it. He was the only one that could. The only one that had any idea what was going on with this. He picked up Ayanami and, gently as he could, pressed her against the surface of the core. Then he reached out with his field and pushed her soul free of that horrible body and into the red sphere. The Angelic body instantly regressed to LCL, which froze in his hands. Shinji sucked every bit of energy from the vile mass, then dropped it to shatter far below.

He had come back to fix the world. The whole world. But _his_ world was breaking. If he couldn't do this, couldn't save one person he cared about, what hope did Shinji have of stopping the Quiet End?

He landed back on the platform and stripped off his clothing. This wasn't Asuka. This was something else entirely. And he... No. He was sure. This was something he could do.

He leapt in after the First Child.

* * *

There was pain and wrong and  
mind peeling/spinning  
not-her wrong energy circle expressing  
wrong wrong WRONG  
and again peeling/spinning  
not-her wrong energy circle expressing different now but  
wrong wrong WRONG!

And further down, making changes to the energy she had taken from Sohryu and absorbing more substance from the false world to observe what effect those changes would have. Over and over, Rei did this. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until there was no longer a scene in the countryside, by a river.

She tried to reform herself. Tried to become herself. She tried until the water and the earth and sky were all used up, and the limits of the world crumbled apart around her, and she fell back on the ship in the Chamber of Lillith.

And he had been there. And he had _seen her_, tumored, sub-human and Angelic. He had approached her even as she tried to beg him to look away. And then they had been flying, her body hanging limp and useless, and he had brought her to an Eva cage. A Unit Fifteen cage. And then he had floated into the air and torn apart the Eva, and to Rei's half-aware mind it was like he was mocking her. Mocking the failure of the Unit Fifteen series, and her fumbling efforts to become human.

But he stopped at the core, and she understood. Like with the horrible girl. He lifted her up and pressed her against the core and pushed her in and.

Confusion. Pain. No body, but she still _was_. And that was progress, if nothing else. If.

Ikari appeared in the core, a gentle warmth. He reached out and touched her soul.

And there was no time to scream. It was all she could do to register a sense of surprise, as he intruded into her absolute territory and _ripped it apart_.

* * *

Ayanami came apart in his 'hands.' The jagged spiralling loop of memories shattered, and then there was just Shinji, and Ayanami's memories.

He surfaced for a moment, looking through the rotting eyes of Unit Fifteen, seeing only a white blur.

Ayanami was still down there. Her golden light was spreading out, every moment of her existence individuating. She was not dead. He had not killed her. These were things Shinji had to say to himself, in order to stay sane.

People, even those with a bit of Angel in them, were nothing but the sum of their memories. Sapience was the result of constant, sub-conscious reference to every memory a person had. That process was, really, _the essence_ of a person. The sum of their memories measured against outward stimuli.

He had heard Asuka's memories resonate, back when they had both been in the core together. A golden figure-eight, exuding essence. Singing the Song of Asuka.

He had just silenced Ayanami's attempt at a song, and it felt like murder. But he would make it right. He would bring her back.

Shinji dove...

* * *

There was nothing. Blankness. The fundamental state of Rei Ayanami had been returned to. Spread out and without will.

And then. Something new. Something that made all that was Rei Ayanami orient upon it and drift in close. The new thing was a memory, and it did not fit.

In it: _A dimly lit NERV barracks cell. Rei is on the cell cot, looking down at _him_. _He _is laying in the narrow space between cot and wall, returning her gaze and thinking, in the complicated way of realization: _She is not Kaworu. I can trust her. I can rely on Ayanami.

A shuffling. An ordering. The contents of this memory must be made to fit. Barracks cell, him - Shinji Ikari. When when when...

Rei Ayanami's memories began to sing...

* * *

The red core was pristine, existing apart from life and death, its interior a universe unto itself.

With a sound like thunder, and the top half of the sphere blew apart. Most of the lower half shattered seconds later in likewise manner. Shinji Ikari emerged from the hollow cavity, his body forming out of pieces of core and air and bits of Unit Fifteen's dead flesh. He was grinning in a manic way.

Beside him, Rei Ayanami was also emerging from nothing, her shape now more or less human, though not identical to her old dummy plug body. Both were stark naked.

Shinji reached back blindly, and carefully settled a hand on Ayanami's shoulder. Tried to establish a connection there, so that he could give the First Child some of his own mass and energy, to speed along her generation.

But Ayanami did not require his help, Shinji discovered. Because within her, perfectly encircled by the torque of her soul, was an S2 engine. Mass and energy were actually flowing _from_ her _into_ him, before he broke the connection in shock.

He half-turned, got a blurred eyeful of a naked girl slowly getting to her feet, and twisted back. Mind racing. S2 engine.

"Ayanami," he spoke quickly. No telling how much time he had. "Could you turn around, please. I need to..."

* * *

She interrupted the Third Child by touching his back, one hand settling on his shoulder, the other onto one narrow hip. And then she poured into Ikari, as much as she could, because this was, at the moment, the most she dared. Touch him. Help him.

He took all she could offer, energy and mass. He was better at building his body, able to alter his internal structures at a sub-molecular level to increase their density without compromising basic function. The increase in mass was counterbalanced by a passive AT Field that normalized his weight within an acceptable human range. She tried to learn from him.

As Rei explored Ikari's body, she felt him explore hers, his awareness lingering upon the font of her energy.

"S2 engine," he slurred as though drugged, his body listing to one side. "S'dangerous."

"No," she replied to his back. "Not that."

"Can you s-ssssuh. Stop it?" he asked. "Going to... build and build... or can you...?"

The thing within her was not a mistake, Rei was certain. It was wholly unexpected, this 'soul engine,' but not a trick. Not an accidental detonation waiting to happen. She broke contact with Ikari, and looked down, seeing, for the first time in her very strange life, flesh that was actually her own. Her body was not as dense as Ikari's, but it was undeniably whole. Once she had acknowledged that, the font of energy inside her dimmed.

"You can control it," Ikari said, his speech returning to normal. "Okay. Okay okay..." he clamped a hand over his mouth.

He floated down to the cage platform in a way Rei could not quite understand. Probably more gravity manipulation. It was hard to tell without being connected to him. She moved to follow, pulling herself along with her AT Field.

He was pulling on his underwear when she landed, and blindly offered Rei the black pants and white button-up shirt of his school uniform.

Ikari looked out across Terminal Dogma while she dressed, and Rei allowed herself a moment of indulgent appraisal. The Third Child had changed, too. He was taller, and there were flecks of ashy gray running through his hair. He was still slim, but no longer in an androgynous way. It appeared that, like her, he had abandoned his previous form in order to truly become himself.

The black uniform pants fit, but the shirt did not. She was able to fasten the bottom three buttons, and no more.

"I am covered," she stated.

Ikari turned. Looked away. Jumped up on the platform railing and crouched there. Looked again.

"Ayanami?" he said, squinting. "Right? Ayanami?"

She had not seen herself yet, there being no mirror convenient, but Rei was having a hard time understanding the Third Child's behavior. Surely she had not changed so much as to be unrecognizable.

He was inching off the railing and down. Slouching forward, mostly keeping his eyes low, but stealing glances at her. Making eye contact. Shuddering.

"Ayanami," he repeated, voice hoarse.

"Yes," what signified this? Was he incredulous? Did he find her new form somehow repellent?

"Rei Ayanami. The First Child."

"Yes, Ikari."

He looked to the ceiling, tears streaking down his face. Took another step forward. Wrapped his arms around her and hugged her _so tight_. And for six long seconds Rei could think of absolutely nothing else.

When those six seconds passed, Ikari broke away, blushing.

"Sorry," he said, for no good reason. "I p-promised myself that if I got back, I would do that."

* * *

They flew back to the ship together, Rei trying to mimic Ikari's active gravitational field. It was actually quite difficult. The process used far less energy than her own method, but required a lot of dynamic control. When she imitated Ikari, Rei could feel the Earth spinning beneath her, and the moon, and wider sources of attraction she could not immediately identify.

Ikari had noticed what she was doing and drifted down by her, dipping with her and then rising, carefully nudging her internal polarity this way and that. It reminded Rei very much of when she had taught him to swim.

Back on the ship, Ikari settled down at the MAGI terminal and Rei went to the shower room, where she kept several spare NERV uniforms. She removed Ikari's black uniform pants, and there was a slight chill between her legs. She felt down there. It was wet.

This was... arousal? Rei wondered, exploring that area of her body in careful detail. It was to be expected, correct? After all...

Her hand came up tinted rose.

Oh.

She retrieved a feminine pad from beneath the sink and laid it in the gusset of her underwear, then pulled it on. The font of energy within her burned bright, a hot blush coloring her body.

She was really human. Human, and something more.

* * *

"Sorry I almost killed you," Shinji said to no one. "Sorry I almost corrupted. You know. A fundamental part of you. Ah, that's no good good good good..."

He paced the deck in his boxer shorts, practicing apologies on the inert Shrike. Another habit taken up in the other world. Sometimes the Shrike had even assumed the form of the person he was supposed to be talking to and respond, modelling behavior off... something. Maybe Shinji's subconscious impression of the person?

"We need to work together. We have to talk to my father. I need. Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait," he was _telling_. About his _needs_. He was supposed to be _asking_.

"I need your help, Ayanami. I can't do this without you. I'm sorry I. I'm sorry my shape corrupted yours, I still don't understand how it happened but," he sank to his knees now, in apology. "I'm very, very sorry."

"I don't understand," came a voice from the side-deck.

"Oh! Uhm," he stood. Ayanami was walking across the bow in her NERV uniform. Shinji backed away from her, deciding to keep his distance. She would be right to get upset, and he was not sure how the energy source inside her would react.

"When I woke up, I uhm, I saw you floating out on the White Giant's morphogenetic field," he said, all in a gush. "And, uhm. Angels were _becoming_ near you and. I put you somewhere because I was worried you'd drift into one of the areas the Angels were forming in and get... get burnt up. But I guess something went wrong, or..."

"Stop," the girl said, holding up a hand. "You believe the state you found me in was your doing. It was not. I wanted this."

"Uhm," Shinji began, licking his lips. "Why?"

* * *

Ayanami told him everything. About how the dummy plug bodies were little more than shells, about how her basic form had long been indifferent to temporal existence. And she told him, yes, about what she had copied from Asuka, and what she had tried to do in the false world.

It made Shinji's flesh crawl. Living inside shells. Not being able to experience emotion directly, or even tactile sensation. Sounded like Hell. A much different sort of Hell than the one he was used to, but horrible nonetheless. To be so desperate as to take some of Asuka's essence and try to build herself a new body around it...

And all Shinji could really say in response was: "Are you happy, then, Ayanami?"

The girl nodded. "Yes. Or nearly."

"What else is there?"

"I need to apologize," she said. "For lying to you. Before."

Silence. She did not elaborate. There was no doubt to what she was referring.

"I knew it was a lie," Shinji finally said, running a hand through his hair. "I. We both knew what had to happen. Thank you for... for looking out for me, Ayanami. I'm sorry I could not wake up sooner, and deploy with you against the 74th."

Ayanami shrugged in her minor way, her arms spreading slightly, wrists turning. "It was my choice. I saw what you had become. I wanted to be like you. Losing my physical form seemed the next step in that process. I was incorrect in this, but do not blame the error on you."

"Well, next time, don't make that choice," Shinji replied, without really thinking. "You're too important Ayanami. You always have been. And I think. I mean, I figured you knew that."

The girl turned away. Blushed. Because, Shinji figured, he had just called her out. Because the way she described it, Ayanami had not been saving the junior pilots that launched with her, no, it sounded like she had committed _suicide_. He couldn't pretend to imagine what that meant for a being like her, who had died twice now, but it still seemed... selfish?

"I didn't get a real good look at you before the Shrike moved you into the false world but... it didn't seem like you were really, uhm, doing anything. You tell me that without a body you don't have any sort of, uhm, will, and then you blow yourself up and... why?"

"It was a calculated risk," Ayanami replied, in a low voice. "I was. After being alive for two years. I thought." She fell silent.

Something in Shinji's brain turned over. Another mental construct from the other world, another device he had used to motivate himself. To give him hope.

"I just. I need to make this clear, _Rei_ Ayanami," he said, stalking toward her now, again without realizing it. He was in the zone now - that unfortunate, honest space in his mind that had been created after hours and hours of confessing to the Shrike when it had taken the form of various people. "You are the most important person on the planet. Right now, before, always. Your connection to this thing," he gestured to the White Giant, "your ability as a pilot, and. And you are _my friend_. I can't. You're part of the reason we can keep on doing this. Keep piloting. Even though each victory brings us closer to..." he stopped mid-sentence. Blinked. Looked around. Took a few steps back.

"Sorry," he said, sinking into a work chair. "I. Ugh. Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry" he covered his mouth for a moment.

Ayanami remained in place, her body turned away, face hidden.

"I've gotten into these habits," he tried to explain when the 'sorry' stopped. "There are these patterns in my head. I have to break them up one by one. I. I didn't mean to go at you like that. Its true, all of it, but. I've gotten used to talking to myself."

"You walk differently," Ayanami said, still turned away. "Your hair is longer, and a different color. And you have these 'habits.' I thought you were like me. That you had become some internal, self-ideal. But you are injured. You are somehow... broken."

"I was gone." Shinji said. "I. I was in another place. A broken world. A place where Adam was all and Lillith was dead. Years, in that place."

"An illusion, when you were in Unit Fifteen's core?"

"No, no. This was real. Just... other. Just." Shinji scratched his head repeatedly, like he was trying to dig out a thought. "Just gray and broken. Just danger and pain. Just... just terror and strangeness. Just the shade and the Shrike and 9,633,049 Angels in the shape of people, all of them trying to pin me down and tear me apart. And they did. Time and again they did. Until I..."

He smiled.

"What I did for Asuka. What I did for you. I gave you both an impression. A memory that was not yours, but had you in it. My thoughts about you, allowing a certain perspective. Self-validation. There was no one to grant me perspective, in that place. This body I have. It took a while to make."

He giggled.

"But I'm here. Yeah? I'm here and its fine. I'm here and the Shrike is under my control. You are alive, and Asuka is well and gone and there is still time, before the End."

"When Lillith's field ceases to be," Ayanami said.

Shinji nodded. "In the other world, it took less than an hour to happen. All over the Earth, the minds of people just fruiting up. Just rotting and turning, as all that was Lillith became Adam. The Quiet End."

"The Quiet End," Ayanami repeated, seemingly trying the phrase on for size.

"So, uhm, how do I look?" Shinji said, gesturing to his hair. The other world was gone. In the past. He wanted to get topside. "You think Misato will recognize me?"

"Your appearance has not changed... significantly," Ayanami replied. "Is the same true for me?"

She turned and straightened out, appearing maybe a little self-conscious as she did so. Shinji got up and approached at a considered pace, trying to give her an obvious inspection without lingering upon anything inappropriate.

Yes, she had changed as well. Her hair was still that strange, somehow _natural_ shade of blue, and her eyes were still blood red but. Her skin, it was no longer that solid, marble color. It was sallow, and there was a light dusting of freckles across her face and... he peered closely. Hair. She had body hair.

"You look human," he said. "You look..." something about her face. It had changed. Not just the freckles, but in a way he could not quantify. And her build was the same, but... was she taller? They were the same height now. He was not sure that had been the case before. He had never noticed.

"You look good," he finished, somewhat lamely.

"Acceptable?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Then we should depart."

He nodded again.

* * *

Rei's menarche had stained Ikari's uniform pants. She had tried to remove the blood, but had over-exerted herself and incinerated the entire garment, along with the uniform shirt, which she had been wearing at the time. For whatever reason, her underwear had remained intact. She explained this to Ikari in non-specific terms. It seemed that during periods of heightened emotion it would be unwise to access the soul engine directly.

Ikari expressed concern... but for her, rather than his clothing. Indeed, he was being agreeably nonchalant about walking around in nothing but boxer shorts. It was probably just a matter of there being no other option and Ikari's desire to get to the surface overriding his sense of propriety. There were several nightshirts in a genderless cut located in the footlocker by her futon, but Rei neglected to mention them. Another minor indulgence, as they prepared to leave for the surface.

It was a simple thing to restore Ikari's clearance. He had been unable to do it himself, being unfamiliar with the language and process of petitioning the MAGI but, unsurprisingly, all three supercomputers returned affirmatives to the request for reinstatement.

Next, Rei went over the data from the sensors in Terminal Dogma, specifically Ikari's battle against the Angels. All three had given off energy signatures which the MAGI would identify as blue pattern. Ikari's appearance in the sensor logs was wholly anomalous, and Rei removed all mention of it, replacing the records of his energy signature with those of a Unit Fifteen.

Then she gave the MAGI conditional access to Terminal Dogma's deniable partition. Just enough for them to identify the Angels and confirm the kill. This action fulfilled the obligations of Rei's rank and access level. Within three hours, the Geo-Front would come off high-alert.

That accomplished, Ikari asked to borrow a portion of Rei's energy. She was not certain why, as they could both now simply leave Terminal Dogma at will, but nonetheless offered her hand. Ikari gently gripped her wrist, then bent over the large stuffed animal he insisted was somehow the Shrike - the same creature that had appeared to Rei in the false world as a tuxedoed, mustachioed man.

The toy was in the rough shape of a cat, though really it was more of a sack of black material with cat-like appendages sewn on. Four stubby paws, ears, a curly tail, and contrast threading on its face in blue and white, indicating eyes and whiskers, respectively.

"Zone of subjective temporal experience," Ikari explained as his AT Field wove around the toy. "Not really something I'm good at, but with this much energy, it... should... work!"

There was a moment of intense drain, Shinji channeling all the power the soul engine could provide. The area around the black sack cat dimmed...

And then the toy bounced, shattering the fade around it, and spun around, as though taking in the ship deck with its sewn blue eyes. Then it let out a "Mew!" that sounded like a person imitating a cat.

"Yeah," Ikari said, apparently speaking to the thing. "I know."

"Mew?" it rotated to face Rei now.

"No. Rei Ayanami, remember? The one we put in the false world?"

The toy bounced off the table and across the floor until it reached Rei's feet. There, it balanced on its hind legs and let out a plaintive "Meeeeeew."

"Quit that," Ikari snapped. "We don't have..." but stopped as Rei bent down and picked the Shrike up.

It was as light as a thing stuffed with cotton should be. Its surface was soft, and there was no hint of technology, aside from the perfect stitching work.

"Mew!" it said, and Rei heard, somewhere in her head, 'nice/protect/friend.'

"Yes," Ikari said. "Ayanami is like me. Please do as she says."

"Um," Rei began, fighting the impulse to drop the thing. "What. What is." Absurd. This thing was completely absurd. "What does it do?"

"Where do you want to go from here?" Ikari asked in way of reply, coming over and putting a hand on the Shrike. "We need to talk to my father soon, but first, where do you really want to be?"

"I. I would like to go home, to ensure that Keicha is safe."

"I... okay. Me too, actually. But yeah."

Ikari told the Shrike her address. They spent several minutes appearing to bickering over the exact location. Rei only half-heard the Shrike's side of the conversation. A local mail distribution center was mentioned. Apparently the Shrike had somehow tapped in to the Japanese Postal Service systems and the distribution center was the final place any mail to Rei's address would be sent before being delivered.

"Sorry," Ikari said, smiling in a tired way. "It still needs some time to learn."

They eventually nailed down the apartment building, then the correct floor, then the correct apartment. Once settled, Ikari plucked the Shrike from Rei's hands.

"Test drive," he explained.

And then boy and toy both vanished. It was like a hole had formed behind Ikari and swallowed him and the Shrike up. Rei blinked. That process. Teleportation.

Half a minute later Ikari returned, the Shrike slung under one arm, a glass of cloudy liquid in his other hand. "Sorry," he gestured with the glass, which Rei recognized as one of her own. "Sugar water, good source of energy. The Shrike needs a little help when it does that. Uhm," he held the toy out. "Keicha is fine. Waiting for you, I think."

"What is this thing?" Rei asked, not yet taking the offered Shrike. "What is it doing?"

"The thing that gave it to me, the shade, called it 'a multi-tool for a multi-verse,'" Shinji replied, "whatever that means. Its sort of... an idea without a concrete shape, I guess. Good at quantum calculations."

"Quantum... teleport?" Rei murmured, reaching for toy.

"Pretty much, ye" Ikari was interrupted as the Shrike cut away the world around them.

And suddenly they were in her kitchen. The faint odor of citrus cleaner and all that gleaming whiteness. Rei shivered. She was home.

Keicha padded in, jumped on the counter-top even though it was strictly forbidden for her to do so, and yowled. Rei handed the Shrike to Ikari and gathered up her cat, which stretched out its arms as though embracing her.

"Did Nakou treat you well?" Rei whispered to the cat, naming the next-door neighbor she had tasked with feeding Keicha and changing her litter box. The cat, of course, had no response. Only curled against her chest and purred.

"Its 4:32 in the afternoon," Ikari murmured, coming up behind her, obviously not wanting to break the moment. "When would you like to go at my father?"

A strange choice of words, Rei thought as she scratched Keicha behind the cat's ears.

"Tomorrow," she replied. "In the early morning. At 8:00. The Commander should be in his offices."

"Okay," the boy replied, squeezing her shoulder. "I'll meet you here at 7:30. Is that okay?"

Rei nodded, eyes closed. Feeling the moment.

"I need to go home myself. Have a good night, Ayanami."

"Ikari," she turned. But he was already gone. And it seemed he had taken something of Rei with him.

She sat in the small living room, still holding Keicha close. The cat had its paws against its body now. It was tired of being held. She released it and it crawled off her lap, then curled up next to her and purred.

Dependence. She was happy, but not entirely so. She was human and Keicha was safe. But Ikari was gone. And the way that made Rei feel made her weak, and nervous.

And really, very happy.


End file.
